Ruskin: ‘Traffic’

 John Ruskin’s lecture “Traffic” is infuriating, except in places where it’s intriguing.

In 1864, Ruskin was called to Bradford, a city near Leeds, to advise wool merchants on the plan for a new exchange building. His taste in art and architecture was respected.

Ruskin’s theory of art strikes me as dangerous, rather than dubious. His talk of great national architecture comes with talk of great national churches, great national worship, great national character.

I think that’s a proven recipe for bad thinking. Making generalizations about national character tempts us to overlook the fact that some Americans are selfless philanthropists while others are swindlers and murderers, some are research scientists while others are dedicated to keeping science out of public schools. Generalizations that are honest to that much diversity aren’t worth much.

But Ruskin’s essay is full of intriguing lines, so broad I wonder whether they’re true.

 

Taste is not only a part and an index of morality — it is the ONLY morality.

 

Ruskin thought if people told you what they liked, you knew them. The person who liked his gin and a pipe was one kind of person, and everyone in Victorian England knew him. The person who liked her kitchen tidy and her family nearby was another kind of person. Everyone knew her. In Ruskin’s view, to know a person’s taste was to know the person.

 

What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.

Our sense of taste can identify us in some ways. If you read this collection of notes, you’d have a sense of my interests. You’ll have an idea of what types of judgments and misjudgments I’m prone to. You might have a sense of my character.

But in other ways, taste is just a matter of preferences that have become habits. I don’t think it tells you anything about character.

One of the cafes in Stone Mountain serves collard greens and sweet potatoes every day. It does so because in this part of the world, Democrats like them and so do Republicans. People of many colors and many religions like them. I’d guess that police officers and criminals like them, and that librarians and book banners do too.

If you are looking at taste as a marker of identity, visiting the café won’t help.

• Source and notes: John Ruskin’s lecture “Traffic” was published in The Crown of Wild Olive.   The Victorian Web has it here:

https://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/traffic.html

I’ve been thinking about taste since reading “Good taste, bad taste, no taste, why taste?” Salmagundi, Fall-Winter, 2024-2025. My first note was “A matter of taste,” Jan. 26, 2025.