Hard-hearted
Paul Ableman
The Cosway Minlatpre Robert Rubens (Bachman and Turner E5.65) This book is a light-hearted caper. At least, that's what it says on the dust cover, and not discreetly in the blurb but as a bold appendage to the title itself. It is a disquieting claim and one that generates a somewhat heavy-hearted reviewer. The reason is that it is not the demure and modest assertion it appears at first glance but a whopping great boast. There are far more books on library shelves that substantiate superficially more grandiose advertisements such as 'a profound analysis: 'an original vision'or even' a thundering masterpiece ' than there are slim volumes that deserve to be credited with the towering stature of light-hearted caper.' Apart from the superb products of middle-period Wodehouse, I can think of no 20th-century English works that merit such an accolade. So has Robert Rubens pulled it off? Is The Cosway Miniature an authentic example of that most lyrical and pastoral of all literary forms? I fear not.
He has given us, in fact, a rather hard-hearted caper. It is the story of Bonnie, debutante and art-thief. Bonnie's mother drank herself to death, leaving Bonnie penniless but related to a family grand enough to assure her that a divorce can be contemplated since 'we're not in line to the throne'. Aunt Bird, who makes the assertion, may not be a vector of the blood royal but, with her chauffeur-driven Daimler and country house that sounds only marginally less splendid than Sandringham, is decidedly upper-crust. Bonnie herself, although the Cinderella of the family, has spent much of her girlhood in the great houses of England. Her knowledge of their layout comes in handy when she teams up with an epicene boy-friend to strip them of portable treasure.
But before settling down to larceny, Bonnie experiments with other careers. Seeking independence, she studies cordon bleu cookery and is soon in great demand in Kensington as a party chef. She next falls in with, and ultimately marries, a 'wild-eyed poet who followed her to Wyndworth one weekend and hid in the stables where she found him scribbling a sonnet on the side of a saddle'. Before long this cliché-bard reveals strains of violence which alienate Bonnie and prompt Aunt Bird to recommend divorce. Bonnie is soon prospecting even further down-market and teams up with a dry-as-dust economist amusingly called Engel. After a few years the couple 'run out of conversation'. Bonnie, encumbered by a child from each marriage, retires to Aunt Bird's estate to regroup her forces. A former boy-friend visits her there and suggests an expedition to a local mansion that has been opened to the public. During the visit he pockets a few minor treasures. Bonnie is at first shocked but soon, for no reason admitted by the author, joins him in nation-wide looting of lightweight valuables. This pillage is presented as a glorious spree, relatively unconnected with pecuniary greed, although the two thieves make quite a packet and open a bank account in Switzerland. They also find it remarkably easy to walk into a chapel and make off with a gem-studded chalice. True, the police begin to close in but bungle so hopelessly that the couple find little difficulty in escaping to Switzerland and the enjoyment of their ill-gotten gains. What a lark!
But somehow the reader's spirits fail to soar. And it's not because of moral squeamishness concerning the breezy attitude towards theft. Nor is the message of the book deplorable because the couple apparently gets off Scot-free and thus transgress an old convention which has long dominated the treatment of crime in literature. The convention is, of course, retribution. Personally, I feel that punishment, if only to maintain aesthetic balance, should follow crime and that Macbeth, for example, would be greatly diminished in impact if the royal pair ended their days as muchloved monarchs ruling over a peaceful and prosperous kingdom.
Still, the crime in The Cosway Miniature can be considered venial and the consequent imbalance trivial. No, the real fault of Mr Rubens's 'light-hearted caper', which endows it with a whiff of true corruption, is that the implied values place style above feeling and objects above people. The prose becomes animated, and even vivid, whenever decor is the subject and fades when chronicling the selfish and vague adventures of the characters. The true heroes of the book are figures of porcelain rather than those of flesh and blood. The work thus depicts a society in which possessions have dispossessed their possessors. Human beings appear as mere parasites on tapestries and miniatures, snuffboxes and old furniture. Humanity becomes merely a function of the collector's response to 'lovely things'. The romantic apogee of the book is reached when the felonious couple embrace around a marble statue of Byron and it is the statue which achieves the greater vitality.
Mr Rubens, . unlike Mr Wodehouse, has not the power to transmute the world into a sparkling new planet peopled by varied and plausible hiiman beings hut purged of real suffering. On the contrary, misery shows through the varnished facade of The Cosway Miniature. 'And the pain continued while her uncle went stalking and the old nanny put Colin's head in the gas oven after tea to keep him quiet . . In this, and many other passages, cruelty, disease, snobbery and madness intrude. There is no doubt that Mr Rubens can write. But light-hearted'? Not by a long chalk!
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