Beautifully written scenes, subtle in their understanding of the workings of societies and psyches, and truly interesting characters. ( )

Read during Winter 2005/2006

I read this a long while ago and only discovered it was part one at the last page as Robin and Donal are reunited from their childhood as the Archduke Ferdinand is assasinated. It took me months to track down the second book so, when it finally turned up on the To Read list, I had little memory of what happened. Project Gutenberg helped out, rather than my deeply crumbling real copy. I had remebered some but completely forgot the central portions. Despite being a very unlikely sort of character, Robin is very appealing. She grows up as the hidden away daughter of a very vain woman who depends on The Head of the House of Coombe for support after the sudden death of her husband, which leaves her penniless. Coombe is an odd character, I think if I lived in Edwardian times, I might know what type is he supposed to be but I don't fully understand him. For reasons not clearly defined, he makes sure Robin is brought up well but she despises him for taking young Donal away from her. It's not really for children, even though it is about her growing up years and has a strange appeal but I'm looking forward to finally reading 'Robin', the second part.

The Head of the House of Coombe was one of Burnett's last novels.  It opens with a girl nicknamed "Feather," as flighty as her name implies who marries young-- and then her husband dies, leaving her with a baby she's never interacted with.  Poor Robin grows up entirely separately from her mother, and indeed, from anyone, until she finally makes friends with a boy named Donal.  Who is then torn away from her, of course.

What is perhaps most interesting about this novel is that it was written after the Great War, but set before.  As such, there's a sense of imminent apocalypse to the whole thing.  One sees this in science fiction written before the war (such as Griffith's Angel of the Revolution and Wells's The War in the Air), but it was striking in a literary novel set after the war.  The apocalyptic tone makes sense given the scale of the catastrophe that was the war, but The Head of the House of Coombe also has, like much apocalyptic fiction, a vaguely utopian feeling.  The world will be utterly destroyed... but something new will emerge from that.  It's not what I expected-- surely that's the optimistic attitude of someone who's not yet had to live through a war?  The novel ends with a great scene where Robin is finally reunited with Donal, but it's the same day that Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated.  Whoops.

Frances Hodgson Burnett has her faults; I am the first to admit it. She can be sententious, foolishly sentimental, even tedious. But when you read one of her adult novels, you come away with a powerful sense of the world she was writing about; she's a one-woman Sociology of the Early Twentieth Century course.

The eponymous head of the House of Coombe is the Earl of Coombe who, early in the novel, mysteriously consents to pay the bills of the pretty, spiteful and wholly nitwitted Feather Gareth-Lawless, who has been left penniless on the death of her irresponsible husband Robert. The arrangement is a scandal to the respectable society of London, who assume, mistakenly, that the Earl is enjoying Feather's sexual favors. Feather and her friends are unconcerned about the rumors; the impact is felt most by little Robin, Feather's innocent, neglected daughter.Robin is the real focus of the novel. Her neglected childhood, wicked nanny, and isolated existence are drawn in the bleakest colors. Luckily for the wretched Robin, young Donal (who happens to be the Earl's heir) briefly enters her life; he is a beacon of light, teaching 6-year-old Robin about kisses and mothers and picture books. But alas, Robin is tainted by her mother's scandalous life, and Donal's mother snatches Donal away from Robin, breaking her wee heart. Her obvious grief brings her to Lord Coombe's attention, and he begins to interest himself in her life.

This is a bit of a "sensation" novel; I loved the parts about the wicked German lusting after Robin's innocence as she struggles to support herself. Robin herself is a clear portrait of the schizophrenic view of women in this pre-WWI time period: she rockets back and forth from utter passivity to fierce assertiveness between lunch and dinner, with hardly a moment to rest between moods. Whatever. I loved it. There is a sequel ("Robin"), and there is no sense reading one without the other; they were originally one novel, appearing in serial form. ( )