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.