4. Silver Cow Creamers and Other Obscure Objects of Desire

The most famous objet d’art in American hard-boiled fiction, the Maltese falcon, is a fake. Gutman assures Sam Spade that ‘enormous as its intrinsic value was—a far higher, a terrific, price could be obtained for it once its authenticity was established beyond doubt’, but if there is one thing that detective novels about objets d’art teach their readers, it is that both value and authenticity are deeply problematic concepts; however precious and rare an object may be its monetary value is never intrinsic, because there has to be a market. Stories about objets d’art do more than this, however: they also trouble the very idea of ownership, because whereas pearls, rubies and diamonds typically tell us something about their owner’s personality, objets d’art often turn out to have been acquired by accident or inheritance and have merely an arbitrary and provisional relationship with their current owners. PG Wodehouse in particular is fond of basing his plots around a thing which is both horrible and coveted, and there is also a prevailing concern with artistry and auteurship which can be related to a concern often found in Golden Age fiction, the importance of the artisanal and the idea that it is under threat from mass production. Alongside this runs a fetishisation of originality and authenticity and also a pervading sense that silver cow-creamers, Fabergé eggs and historic chalices are desirable principally because somebody else desires them; the emotion aroused by acquiring them is pride of possession spiced by the knowledge that they cannot be owned by anyone else. The theft of such an object is thus morally if not actually a crime against the person, since although it does not involve physical violence it is designed to diminish the consequence and self-esteem of the person from whom the object is taken or withheld, the act of withholding being in this case psychologically equivalent to the act of theft.