by Gerald Kersh
Content to behold his son’s development, Matthew withdrew from the business and busied himself with Supralapsarian affairs. He presented to the Clodpuddle Church a new font, made of old Absalom Relish’s original pickle-tub, embellished with a silver rim and mounted on an elegant and complicated brass stand; and when he died in 1889, he was laid to rest in the Relish Mausoleum. The discomfited and envious Suckling, on seeing this superb edifice, which is nearly as large as the Marble Arch, and has almost as many knobs as the Albert Memorial, was heard to mutter: “Old Relish never told the truth in his lifetime. They did right to carve above his name the words: ‘Here Lies . . .’ ”
But in spite of his unflagging efforts, Suckling was never able to equal the success of the House of Relish. If he lowered his prices, Horatio sternly undercut him. If he introduced a new cork, Horatio surpassed it. Above all, Suckling could never quite achieve the public appeal of the word ‘Pure’—that inspiration of a noble mind. By virtue of that word, Horatio seemed to have seized the public in an unbreakable lock-hold. People said: “Try a little Relish’s—they’re pure, you know”; and “Oh, come, Relish’s won’t hurt you. They’re the purest going.” In a certain slander case at the Courts of Justice, a certain Mr. Trollip passionately exclaimed: “My Lord, Relish’s Pickles themselves are not purer than my daughter.”
Horatio, long before this, had married the daughter of Admiral Effingham Fawcett, who had presented him with twin sons, Absalom Effingham and Matthew Fawcett, in 1882. The two boys went into the business in 1903, and there Matthew soon displayed the business acumen and sound selective brain of his father. Indeed, since he and Absalom had proceeded, so to speak, from two halves of the same cell, it was to be assumed that all the good points had fallen on Matthew’s side, leaving Absalom entirely devoid of brains, character, and virtue. Matthew’s brain was as heavy, hard, and solid as a brick: Absalom’s was like so much wax, ready to receive the flimsiest new impression and retain it. The father, Horatio, stood like a rock; Absalom drifted from idea to idea, like a rudderless boat on a sea. Horatio was the rock against which Absalom broke.
The time came when Absalom, seduced by some featherbrained theoretician from America, dared to set himself up as a critic of his father’s methods.
“What you’ve done,” he had the temerity to say, “is all very well. It was good enough for the eighteen-eighties; it may even be good enough for to-day. But the time is coming, Dad”—he had been only too ready to acquire the gross slang of the gutters: he called his male parent “Dad!”—“The time is coming when you will suddenly find yourself too far behind the times to catch up.”
“Silence!” shouted old Horatio, “you have gone too far! You take too much upon yourself. I have been manufacturing these pickles since eighteen——”
“Yes, yes, you’ve been manufacturing these pickles since eighteen hundred and one, if you like. But that doesn’t mean to say you know anything about selling them in the twentieth century. If the Zenz Corporation came to England——”
“Silence!”
“England is England, and America is America,” said young Matthew; for even in those years he did not falter at the most profound philosophical propositions.
“You mark my words,” said the hysterical Absalom, “one of these days Zenz will shove you off the market.”
“Insolent young puppy!” roared Horatio. “Leave the office!”
“Why don’t you go to your Zenz Corporation, then?” suggested Matthew with fine irony.
“All right,” said Absalom, grinding his teeth in a murderous fury, “I will go to Zenz. But before I go let me tell you that your whole business is run like a cockle-stall; the packing is ridiculous; the advertising is childish; the——”
“Get out!” bellowed Horatio. “Get out!”
“That’s right, get out,” said Matthew.
Absalom left the office, slamming the door with such vicious force that one of the brass Cupids which decorated the panels fell off on to the carpet. He never came back. Rumour hinted that he had gone to the devil. One thing is certain, and that is, that he joined the Zenz Corporation, an American company of ill repute, addicted to such slogans as “Get the Zenz Bill Pickle Habit—It Pays!”
Nobody mentioned his name. Matthew, however, was a man of his father’s kidney. He realised that the business was so firmly established that nothing on earth could shake it, and knew that nothing more needed to be done. This righteous young man, like his father, was a pillar of the Supralapsarian Church, and had engraved upon his watch the noble motto: “Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” He consoled his father for Absalom’s worthlessness, and when Horatio breathed his last in the treacherous autumn of 1912, he said, with his dying breath: “It is with an easy mind and a joyous heart that I leave the control of the House of Relish in the hands of my beloved son Matthew.”
Absalom, meanwhile, was consorting with birds of his own feather in the Zenz Corporation.
Matthew was a man of strong character, unaffected by the changing of the times. He adopted as the trade mark of the Company an extraordinarily realistic picture of a gigantic pickle-jar immovably imbedded in a pedestal of solid rock, and this symbol figured prominently on the letter headings of the firm, between the picture of the factory and the intricate scroll-work which bore the name of Relish. Matthew’s speech imprinted itself unforgettably on the minds of all who heard it.
“The rock is our sign; we shall not budge!” he cried; “we shall resist, with all our might, the new American influences which, like a destructive volcanic eruption, are creeping insidiously into our everyday life—we shall endeavour to nip them in the bud before they can take root and inundate us.”
In an interview which he granted to a writer for Sputters, a popular weekly paper, Matthew uttered more immortal words:
“America attempts to conquer the world. But we shall not be conquered. The motor-car is something that must pass away: this is plain logic. Otherwise, for what purpose did the Creator devise the horse? . . .
“The safety-razor twines itself about our feet like a scourge. Soon, every beardless boy will shave. It is for England to stop this . . .
“Man will never fly. Does it not occur to these crazy dreamers that if we were meant to fly we would have been born with wings? . . .
“The kinematograph will die out. The public must have Reality . . .
“Modern advertising? Stuff and nonsense! The public know that Relish’s Pickles are the best. Otherwise they wouldn’t buy them. And since the public continue to buy Relish’s Pickles, what good can be done by advertising? We shall, therefore, spend less on advertising in the coming year . . .”
The firm of Suckling, however, was inspired by no such lofty ideals. They scrambled for orders. They clamoured from every hoarding. They presented a copy of Alice in Wonderland in exchange for twenty labels from their two-pound jars of pickles; a set of boot-brushes for fifty labels; and a silver-gilt-type combination shoe-horn and pickle-fork for a hundred and fifty labels. Other firms were not slow in following suit. Sickerbeit Marmalade offered a buttonhook for fifteen labels. Rodent Tooth Powder provided a wash-leather eyeglass-wiper for every seventy-three empty tins; Dual-Purpose Soap gave a scrubbing-brush and a tastefully embroidered floorcloth for four hundred wrappers; Bifurcal Barbed Hairpin stunned the world with a sensational offer of a jug, basin-soap-dish, and night-pot of willow-pattern crockery in exchange for two thousand empty packets. A wild philanthropy seemed to be animating the larger commercial houses, and there is no saying where it all might have ended, had it not been for the outbreak of the War to End Wars.
Matthew Relish had scorned to involve himself in the gift-schemes of his competitors. “If,” said that far-seeing man, “these people have to bribe the public with gifts before they can sell their products—if they find it necessary to adopt the trickery of slogans and catchwords—it says little for the state of their business. We do not have to do such things. It is true
that, as a result of Suckling’s gift-books and pickle-forks, we have sold a few jars less. But the public will realise, gentlemen; the public will realise.” And, as a final gesture of contempt, Matthew closed down his Advertising Department, and relegated all his publicity to the hands of a very reliable old gentleman named Arnold Sucklethumbkin-Dithers—a churchwarden of the Supralapsarian Church, distantly related to a Mrs. Drool, who had a nephew on The Times. Mr. Sucklethumbkin-Dithers, we feel bound to say, was a sufferer from asthma, corns, and halitosis, and his method of organising a publicity-campaign was to whistle the words: “Same as before.” His secretary was a lady named Miasma, who, in spite of the fact that her gums had withered so that whenever she spoke she was compelled to hold up her front teeth with her right hand and keep down her lower teeth with her left, afforded him much assistance. “Miasma,” said Dithers, “is invaluable.”
Notwithstanding this, when the First World War came, the House of Relish, incredible to state, was doing relatively poor business. But Matthew was right. Relish’s needed no publicity. England rose to defend the right, and hordes of sturdy Britons marched across the plains of Flanders to defeat the insatiable Hun. There, their souls yearned for the old, familiar Relish Jar. A gentleman from the War Office called on Matthew, and suggested that Relish’s should supply the forces with pickles. Matthew was a patriot to the core. He readily agreed to this, and quite soon the Clodpuddle factory was packing as many pickles in one week as it had previously packed in six months. But with all this increased prosperity, Matthew did not change. When somebody said to him: “Would it not be advisable, Mr. Relish, since you are winning us the war so rapidly, to have labels printed in the German language for use in Berlin?” Matthew replied: “On no account. They must learn to speak English.” He learned, with deep regret, of the English losses at Passchendaele, and was heard to say: “The flower of our manhood! Who will be left to eat my Pickles?” His prosperity still increased; his bank-balance assumed fantastic proportions, but this did not spoil the man. He still served his country. He threatened with instant and ignominious dismissal any of his male employees who did not volunteer for active service, and had erected on Clodpuddle Green a Roll of Honour in marble, upon which he engraved their names as they fell. A happy inspiration struck him, and he surmounted the memorial with a very elegant scroll, bearing the inscription: “Greater Love Hath No Man Than This.” It soon became evident that Matthew Relish could not possibly receive less than a Peerage.
Nothing could stem the flow of his humanitarianism. When he heard stories of German atrocities, his soul revolted. German Officer Eats Belgian Baby, said the Daily Squirt. “Oh, barbarous, barbarous!” cried Matthew. “Had the child been baptized?” No. “Oh, disgusting, disgusting! And did the German officer eat pickles with it?” No. “Oh, unspeakable, unspeakable! We must destroy these people as the Lord destroyed Amalek.” When the Armistice was declared, Matthew became pensive. “Have we punished them enough?” he said. “Ought we not to continue the war for another nine or ten years? It would teach them such a lesson . . .”
Nevertheless, peace came, and a grateful country endowed Matthew with the title First Baron Clodpuddle.
But what, in the meantime, had happened to Matthew’s wicked brother, Absalom? Absalom had gone to America, to join the Zenz Corporation; a firm devoid of dignity and decency, which had assumed considerable proportions in that unpleasant continent where actors and actresses shamelessly court publicity by getting divorced before committing adultery; where one half of the population lives by giving the other half something which it calls “The woiks”; and where the attention of the consumer is attracted to goods by the most revolting physical details. Absalom was in his element. As might be expected, he went from bad to worse. He rose to eminence in the firm of Zenz by his advertising campaign—the notorious “Owch!” series which depicted men and women screwing up their faces, with their mouths full of half-masticated pickles, and saying: “Owch! That pickle bites! Why don’t you get a blended pickle?” Under the pictures, huge black capitals scream:
ZENZ BLENDS NEVER BITE BACK!
He left Zenz, and went to Blitz Novelties, where he slid a little farther down towards the limbo of the Utterly Lost. He took two sticks of wood, tied them together with a bit of coloured string, and called the absurd result “Snickit”. Then, through a nation-wide campaign, he so popularised “Snicket” that the entire population of the United States paid ten, fifteen, and twenty-five cents for those pieces of wood and string, and wherever one went, one could see nothing but Snicket-addicts endeavouring, with tense faces, to balance one stick on top of the other. Policemen played it in the streets; judges adjourned court to play “Snicket” with the District Attorneys; and an old lady in Kalamazoo died of excitement on seeing Trixie Pyetpaskudniakov, Snicket Queen of Peoria, achieve the almost impossible “Snick”.
Thence, Absalom, now known as “Ab. Relish”, proceeded to Samovar Soap Inc., and caused the entire American population to sniff anxiously at one another by his “Smell Clean” campaign. Under pictures of men and women locked in an erotic embrace, appeared the words:
HARVEST MOON . . . BLUE? ROMANTIC NIGHT . . .
HEARTS THRILL AS LIP MEETS LIP IN
LINGERING ECSTASY . . .
But are you sure that when your arms encircle her, she does not hold her breath?
Can you be sure you smell clean? Perspiration damps romance. Wash with Samovar, and feel sure!
10 cents a tablet.
From this, Absalom returned to the Pickle industry; for there was nothing sacred to this fellow. Not content with soiling soap with his touch, he must needs return to the trade of his fathers. Pickles ran in the veins of the Relishes; he could not keep away. The Zenz Corporation offered him a salary which was assessed at about nine times the salary of the President of the United States, and Absalom returned to take charge of their vast Publicity Department.
He began by undermining the morale of certain celebrities. Film stars, politicians, aristocrats, gangsters—any man in the public eye was demonstrated as being addicted to Zenz products. Mrs. Ten Billion was portrayed, in riding-dress, conveying a Zenz Pickle to her scornful lips on a golden fork; the glamorous Etta Gobrag was shown eating pickles out of the jar on the “set”, and saying: “Leave me; I want to be alone with my Zinz Pickles”; Machine-Gun Toots Boloni was shown in gaol, devouring his favourite sandwich, which consisted of a joker and a nine of hearts and Zenz Pickles; a visiting Duke was posed with a monocle and a jar, saying: “What bally ho, dear old thing, Zenz Pickles are most frightfully nice.”
A radio programme was organised, devoted to the merits of Zenz Pickles—the first of its kind in the United States.
“By the courtesy of Zenz Pickles,” and “Zenz Pickles now send you . . .” resounded in every home. The most popular artistes were hired at fabulous fees. But this was only the beginning. Magazines, newspapers, hoardings, all blazed with new, fantastic slogans, arresting photographs, and disturbing statements. Rugged-looking models, dressed as pioneers, engine-drivers, telegraph-wire stringers, newspaper reporters, all-in wrestlers, weight-lifters, and public speakers declared: “Yuh kin go further on Zenz Pickles.” “Funny thing, I can’t go half as far without Zenz Pickles.” “Gee, I get breathless when I miss my Zenz Pickles.” Little boys looked up at healthy American mothers, and said: “Aw gee, mom, Zenz Pickles make me strong,” or tossed mighty mouthfuls of meat into their systems while their admiring parents whispered: “We don’t have to coax him to eat now we have Zenz Pickles.” The healthiness of Zenz Pickles was harped upon until it burned its way into the soul of the people. A boxer could almost vanquish his opponent before the fight, simply by ostentatiously eating Zenz Pickles. Anybody who ate any other brand of pickles felt hopelessly handicapped in the battle of life.
“And now again,” said Ab Relish, “we got to consider the elderly element of the population. What burns up the old folks? The fact that they ain’t so lively as they used to be. Lively.
Get what I mean? All right. Now you get some doctors, see? And get the scientific angle on just how onions and vinegar tickle up the glands. Get me? Then we can work some sort of angle like: Zenz Glandular Pickles, or Rejuvenate While you Eat. A picture of some old fellow looking regretfully at the legs of some Follies girl: Not so young as he used to be. Why? Why, because his glands want stimulating. Therefore eat Zenz Pickles. And again, the same old feller with the wrinkles ironed out, making whoopee on a dance floor, with a paper hat and a blonde, or something: Young again! Why? You know why. Get it? Health, health, always health. Since the war, people feel they know what’s good for ’em. All right. Appeal to their intelligence. Sure, I know they ain’t got any intelligence, but make ’em feel scientific. You can take it from me, there’s no hooey to beat scientific hooey. Pictures of nerves and guts; diagrams of glands. Get the angle? Well . . .”
Zenz Pickles swept America. Meanwhile Matthew Relish, carried along on the crest of the book of the nineteen-twenties, was sweeping England. When he heard of Zenz, he laughed. And when he received news of the Coming of Zenz to England, he still laughed, with the deep, whole-hearted laughter of an impregnable man.