On Taste

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Title:     On Taste
Author: A. G. Gardiner [More Titles by Gardiner]

I was in a feminine company the other day when the talk turned on war economies, with the inevitable allusion to the substitution of margarine for butter. I found it was generally agreed that the substitution had been a success. "Well," said one, "I bought some butter the other day--the sort we used to use--and put it on the table with the margarine which we have learned to eat. My husband took some, thinking it was margarine, made a wry face, and said, 'It won't do. This margarine economy is beyond me. We must return to butter, even if we lose the war.' I explained to him that he was eating butter, the butter, and he said, 'Well, I'm hanged!' Now, what do you think of that?"

I said I thought it showed that taste was a matter of habit, and that imagination played a larger part in our make-up than we supposed. We say of this or that thing that it is "an acquired taste," as though the fact was unusual, whereas the fact would seem to be that we dislike most things until we have habituated ourselves to them. As a youth I abominated the taste of tobacco. It was only by an industrious apprenticeship to the herb that I overcame my natural dislike and got to be its obedient servant. And even my taste here is unstable. I needed a certain tobacco to be happy and thought there was no other tobacco like it. But I discovered that was all nonsense. When the war tax sent the price up, I determined that my expenditure should not go up with it, and I tried a cheaper sort. I found it distasteful at first, but now I prefer it to my old brand, just as the lady's husband finds that he prefers the new margarine to the old butter.

And it is not only gastronomic taste which seems so much the subject of habit. That hat that was so absolute a thing last year is as dowdy and impossible to-day as if it had been the fashion of the Babylonians. It has always been so. "We had scarce worn cloth one year at the Court," says Montaigne, "what time we mourned for our King Henrie the Second, but certainly in every man's opinion all manner of silks were already become so vile and abject that was any man seen to wear them he was presently judged to be some countrie fellow or mechanical man." And you remember that in Utopia gold was held of so small account by comparison with iron that it was used for the baser purposes of the household.

We are adaptable creatures, and easily make our tastes conform to our environment and our customs. There are certain savage tribes who wear rings through their noses. When Mrs. Brown, of Tooting, sees pictures of them she remarks to Mr. Brown on the strange habits of these barbarous people. And Mr. Brown, if he has a touch of humour in him, points to the rings hanging from Mrs. Brown's ears, and says: "But, my dear, why is it barbarous to wear a ring in the nostril and civilised to wear rings in the ears?" The dilemma is not unlike that of the savage tribe whom the Greeks induced to give up cannibalism. But when the cannibals, who had piously eaten their parents, were asked instead to adopt the Greek custom of burning the bodies they were horrified at the suggestion. They would cease to eat them; but burn them? No. I can imagine Mrs. Brown's savages agreeing to take the rings out of their noses, but refusing blankly to put them in their ears.

I have no doubt that the long-haired Cavaliers used to regard the short hair of the Puritans as the "limit" in bad taste, but the man who today dares to walk down the Strand with hair streaming down his back is looked at as a curiosity and a crank, and we all join in that delightful addition to the Litany which Moody invented: "From long-haired men and short-haired women, Good Lord, deliver us." But who shall say that our children will not reverse the prayer?

Even in my own brief span I have seen men's faces pass through every hirsute change under the Protean influence of "good taste." I remember when, to be really a student of good form, a man wore long side-whiskers of the Dundreary type. Then "mutton chops" and a moustache were the thing; then only a moustache; now we have got back to the Romans and the clean shave. But where is the absolute "good taste" in all this? Or take trousers. If you had lived a hundred years ago and had dared to go about in trousers instead of knee-breeches you would have been written down a vulgar fellow. Even the great Duke of Wellington in 1814 was refused admittance to Almack's because he presented himself in trousers. Now we relegate knee-breeches to fancy dress balls and Court functions.

But sometimes the canons of good taste are astonishingly irrational. Who was it who set Christendom wearing black, sad, hopeless black as the symbol of mourning? The Roman ladies, who had never heard of the doctrine of the Resurrection, clothed themselves in white for mourning. It is left for the Christian world, which looks beyond the grave, to wear the habiliments of despair. If I go to a funeral I am as conventional as anybody else, for I have not the courage of a distinguished statesman whom I saw at his brother's funeral wearing a blue overcoat, check trousers, and a grey waistcoat, and carrying a green umbrella. I can give you his name if you doubt me--a great name, too. And he would not deny the impeachment. I am not prepared to endorse his idea of good taste; but I hate black. "Why should I wear black for the guests of God?" asked Ruskin. And there is no answer. Perhaps among the consequences of the war there will be a repudiation of this false code of taste.

[The end]
A. G. Gardiner's essay: On Taste

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