Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped is a wonderful short story by Saki (H.H.Munro), which was published in The Chronicles of Clovis
in 1911. It's a satire on advertising and marketing, and 'the fact that
people will do things from a sense of duty which they would never
attempt as a pleasure'. Since some of Saki's other work has been
reproduced here, I think it's OK for me to do so (if not please /msg me
and I'll replace with a synopsis):
Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse that Helped, by Saki (H.H.Munro)
"I
want to marry your daughter," said Mark Spayley with faltering
eagerness. "I am only an artist with an income of two hundred a year,
and she is the daughter of an enormously wealthy man, so I suppose you
will think my offer a piece of presumption."
Duncan Dullamy, the great company inflator, showed no outward
sign of displeasure. As a matter of fact, he was secretly relieved at
the prospect of finding even a two-hundred-a-year husband for his
daughter Leonore. A crisis was rapidly rushing upon him, from which he
knew he would emerge with neither money nor credit; all his recent
ventures had fallen flat, and flattest of all had gone the wonderful
new breakfast food, Pipenta, on the advertisement of which he had 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 of phantom wealth.
"Yes," said Mark, wisely avoiding the error of
over-protestation. And to his astonishment Leonore's father not only
gave his consent, but suggested a fairly early 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 a poster of the despised Pipenta, "and you'll have done
more than any of my agents have been able to accomplish."
"It wants a better name," said Mark reflectively, "and
something distinctive in the 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 no pictures of massive babies springing up
with fungus-like rapidity under its forcing influence, or of
representatives of the leading nations of the world scrambling with
fatuous eagerness for its possession. One huge sombre poster depicted
the Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get
at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent
bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more
gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and
women of the day in the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent
individuals of both political parties, Society hostesses, well-known
dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists were
dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the
musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the shades of the Inferno,
smiling still from force of habit, but with the fearsome smiling rage
of baffled effort. The poster bore no fulsome allusions to the merits
of the new breakfast food, but a single grim statement ran in bold
letters along its base: "They cannot buy it now."
Spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of
duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure. There are thousands
of respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in
a Turkish bath, would explain 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 would stare 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 assumes that it has
been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another; no one seems
to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours
now and then.
And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would have
eaten Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its
advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to
clamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig-tailed
daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of
its preparation. On the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was
partaken of in silence. Once the womenfolk discovered that it was
thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their households
knew no bounds. "You haven't eaten your Filboid Studge!" would be
screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he turned weariedly from the
breakfast-table, and his evening 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 fanatics who ostentatiously mortify
themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and health
garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnest spectacled
young men devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club. A
bishop who did not believe in a future state preached against the
poster, and a peer's daughter died from eating too much of the
compound. A further advertisement was obtained when an infantry
regiment mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous
mess; fortunately, Lord Birrell of Blatherstone, who was War Minister
at the moment, saved the situation by his happy epigram, that
"Discipline to be effective must be optional."
Filboid Studge had become a household word, but Dullamy
wisely realized that it was not necessarily the last word in breakfast
dietary; its supremacy would be challenged as soon as some yet more
unpalatable food should be put on the market. There might even be a
reaction in favour of something tasty and appetizing, and the Puritan
austerity of the moment might be banished from domestic cookery. At an
opportune moment, therefore, he sold out his interests in 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 naturally found 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 the financial lion with such untoward
effect, was left to curse the day he produced the wonder-working
poster.
"After all," said Clovis, meeting him shortly afterwards at his club,
"you have this doubtful consolation, that 'tis not in mortals to
countermand success."
A quick note: "Philboyd Studge" was also a character in Kurt Vonnegut's book Breakfast of Champions. Makes sense.