Filboid Studge

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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"I want to marry your daughter," said Mark Spayley with faltering eagerness. "Iam only an artist with an income of two hundred a year, and she is the daughterof an enormously wealthy man, so I suppose you will think my offer a piece ofpresumption."Duncan Dullamy, the great company inflator, showed no outward sign ofdispleasure. As a matter of fact, he was secretly relieved at the prospect offinding even a two-hundred-a-year husband for his daughter Leonore. A crisis wasrapidly rushing upon him, from which he knew he would emerge with neither moneynor credit; all his recent ventures had fallen flat, and flattest of all hadgone the wonderful new breakfast food, Pipenta, on the advertisement of which hehad sunk such huge sums. It could scarcely be called a drug in the market;people bought drugs, but no one bought Pipenta."Would you marry Leonore if she were a poor man's daughter?" asked the man ofphantom wealth."Yes," said Mark, wisely avoiding the error of over-protestation. And to hisastonishment Leonore's father not only gave his consent, but suggested a fairlyearly date for the wedding."I wish I could show my gratitude in some way," said Mark with genuine emotion."I'm afraid it's rather like the mouse proposing to help the lion.""Get people to buy that beastly muck," said Dullamy, nodding savagely at aposter of the despised Pipenta, "and you'll have done more than any of my agentshave been able to accomplish.""It wants a better name," said Mark reflectively, "and something distinctive inthe poster line. Anyway, I'll have a shot at it."Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new breakfast food,heralded under the resounding name of "Filboid Studge." Spayley put forth nopictures of massive babies springing up with fungus-like rapidity under itsforcing influence, or of representatives of the leading nations of the worldscrambling with fatuous eagerness for its possession. One huge sombre posterdepicted the Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to getat the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls justbeyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtlesuggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the portrayalof the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, Societyhostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguishedaeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of themusical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the shades of the Inferno, smiling stillfrom force of habit, but with the fearsome smiling rage of baffled effort. Theposter bore no fulsome allusions to the merits of the new breakfast food, but asingle grim statement ran in bold letters along its base: "They cannot buy itnow."Spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of dutywhich they would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands of respectablemiddle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish bath, wouldexplain in all sincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish baths;if you told them in return that you went there because you liked it, they wouldstare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. In the same way,whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumesthat it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another; no oneseems to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours nowand then.And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would have eaten FilboidStudge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its advertisement drovehousewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to clamour for an immediate supply.In small kitchens solemn pig-tailed daughters helped depressed mothers toperform the primitive ritual of its preparation. On the breakfast-tables ofcheerless parlours it was partaken of in silence. Once the womenfolk discoveredthat it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their householdsknew no bounds. "You haven't eaten your Filboid Studge!" would be screamed atthe appetiteless clerk as he turned weariedly from the breakfast-table, and hisevening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would be explained as"your Filboid Studge that you didn't eat this morning." Those strange fanaticswho ostentatiously mortify themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with healthbiscuits and health garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnestspectacled young men devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club. Abishop who did not believe in a future state preached against the poster, and apeer's daughter died from eating too much of the compound. A furtheradvertisement was obtained when an infantry regiment mutinied and shot itsofficers rather than eat the nauseous mess; fortunately, Lord Birrell ofBlatherstone, who was War Minister at the moment, saved the situation by hishappy epigram, that "Discipline to be effective must be optional."Filboid Studge had become a household word, but Dullamy wisely realized that itwas not necessarily the last word in breakfast dietary; its supremacy would bechallenged as soon as some yet more unpalatable food should be put on themarket. There might even be a reaction in favour of something tasty andappetizing, and the Puritan austerity of the moment might be banished fromdomestic cookery. At an opportune moment, therefore, he sold out his interestsin the article which had brought him in colossal wealth at a critical juncture,and placed his financial reputation beyond the reach of cavil. As for Leonore,who was now an heiress on a far greater scale than ever before, he naturallyfound her something a vast deal higher in the husband market than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer. Mark Spayley, the brainmouse who had helped thefinancial lion with such untoward effect, was left to curse the day he producedthe wonder-working poster."After all," said Clovis, meeting him shortly afterwards at his club, "you havethis doubtful consolation, that 'tis not in mortals to countermand success."

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