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Romanticism,
Philosophy,
and Literature
Edited by
Michael N. Forster · Lina Steiner
Romanticism, Philosophy, and Literature
Michael N. Forster • Lina Steiner
Editors
Romanticism,
Philosophy, and
Literature
Editors
Michael N. Forster Lina Steiner
Bonn University Bonn University
Bonn, Germany Bonn, Germany
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
Chapter 4 is a revised and translated version of Johannes Korngiebel, “Schlegel und Hegel in
Jena. Zur philosophischen Konstellation zwischen Januar und November 1801,” © 2018
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, an imprint of the Brill Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden,
Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill
Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany)Chapter 9 is reprinted by permission from The
Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism by Philippe Lacou-
Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, the State University of New York Press, © 1988, State
University of New York. All Rights Reserved.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Michael N. Forster and Lina Steiner
Part I Philosophy 17
6 Romantic Antisemitism153
Frederick C. Beiser
vii
viii Contents
Index359
Notes on Contributors
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Fichte
EPW Early Philosophical Writings. Translated by Daniel Breazeale.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
FNR Foundations of Natural Right. Translated by Frederick
Neuhouser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
GA Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Edited by Reinhard Lauth et al. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:
Frommann-Holzboog, 1962–2012.
IW Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings.
Translated by Daniel Breazeale, Indianapolis/Cambridge:
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994.
SK Science of Knowledge. Translated by Peter Heath and John
Lachs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
SK 1804 Science of Knowing: J.G. Fichte’s 1804 Lectures on the
Wissenschaftslehre. Translated by Walter E. Wright. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Hegel
GW Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Gesammelte Werke. In Verbindung
mit der deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft. Edited by Rheinisch-
Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hamburg: Felix
Meiner, 1968–.
xv
xvi ABBREVIATIONS
Hegel/Hölderlin/Schelling
EPS Earliest Program for a System of German Idealism. In Theory as
Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings.
Edited by Jochen Schulte-Sasse et al. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1996. 72–73.
Herder
FHA J ohann Gottfried Herder Werke. Edited by U. Gaier et al. Frankfurt
am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–.
S Johann Gottfried Herder Sämtliche Werke. Edited by B. Suphan
et al. 33 vols. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1877–1913.
Hölderlin
StA Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Friedrich Beissner. Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1943ff.
Kant
AA Kant, Immanuel. [Immanuel] Kant’s gesammelte Schriften. Edited
by the Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Later
by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Berlin
and Leipzig: Reimer/de Gruyter, 1900/1911–.
KrV Kritik der reinen Vernunft. In Immanuel Kant, Theoretische
Philosophie. Texte und Kommentar. Edited by Georg Mohr. Vol. 1.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2004.
KU Kritik der Urteilskraft. Cited from the amended second edition
(B) of 1793: Schriften zu Ästhetik und Naturphilosophie, critically
edited and with commentary by Manfred Frank und Véronique
Zanetti. Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1996. New
impression with identical pagination in 3 vols. as pocket edition:
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001. In one volume: Frankfurt a. M.:
Insel TB 4, 2009.
ABBREVIATIONS xvii
Kierkegaard
KW Kierkegaard, Søren. Kierkegaard’s Writings. Edited by H. Hong
and E. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978ff. Cited
by abbreviated individual volume title and page number.
SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter. Edited by Søren Kierkegaard
Forskningscenteret, København: Gads, 1997 ff. Cited by volume
and page number.
Nietzsche
KSA 3 Nietzsches Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. III.3. Edited by
F. Bornmann. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1993.
Novalis
AB Novalis. Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia. Das Allgemeine
Brouillon. Translated by D.W. Wood. New York: State University of
New York Press, 2007.
FS Fichte-Studies. Edited and translated by Jane Kneller. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
NS Novalis Schriften: Die Werke von Friedrich von Hardenberg. Edited
by Richard Samuel, H.-J. Mähl, P. Kluckhorn, and G. Schulz.
Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960–1988. Cited in the format “NS
2:494, no. 4” indicating volume and page number (as well as frag-
ment number, if applicable).
PW Philosophical Writings. Edited by Mahony Stoljar. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1997.
xviii ABBREVIATIONS
Schelling
SW Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by
K.F.A. Schelling. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856–61.
Schiller
NA Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Edited by Julius Petersen et al.
54 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943.
TGG “Die Götter Griechenlandes.” In Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe.
Edited by Julius Petersen, 1:190–5. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus
Nachfolger, 1943. The English translation: The Poems of Schiller.
Translated by E. A. Bowring. London: George Bell and Sons,
1874, 72–7.
Schlegel, Friedrich
DP “Dialogue on Poesy.” In Schulte-Sasse, Jochen et al. (eds.),
Theory and Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German
Romantic Writings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997. 180–94.
KFSA Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Edited by E. Behler,
J. J. Anstett, and H. Eichner. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1958–.
SZ Friedrich Schlegel im Spiegel seiner Zeitgenossen. Collected and
annotated by Hans Eichner, edited by Hartwig Mayer and
Hermann Patsch. 4 vols. Würzburg: Königshausen und
Neumann, 2012.
Schleiermacher
KGA Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst. Kritische Gesamtausgabe.
Edited by Hans Joachim Birkner, Gerhard Ebeling, Hermann
Fischer, Heinz Kimmerle, and Kurt-Victor Selge. Berlin and
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980–.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
German Romanticism has not received the attention it deserves from phi-
losophers and literary scholars in the Anglophone world. This volume is
concerned with German Romanticism’s ideas about philosophy and litera-
ture, especially during its first and most important phase: the early German
Romanticism of roughly the period 1796–1801. The volume is also con-
cerned with the influence of those ideas on later thinkers both within
Germany and beyond it.
As is well known, German Romanticism was philosophically ambitious
not only in a general way, but in particular metaphysically. One of its lead-
ing representatives, Schleiermacher, already in the early 1790s embraced a
version of Spinoza’s monism, which he attempted to reconcile with the
epistemological strictures of Kant’s critical philosophy, and he then con-
tinued to propagate such a position in his famous On Religion: Speeches to
Its Cultured Despisers from 1799. Friedrich Schlegel, after an initial flush
of enthusiasm for the subjective idealism that Fichte developed in Jena
during the 1790s, in 1796 turned to criticizing it, and by 1800–01 was
instead committed to a project of synthesizing Spinoza’s monism with it
(a project that Hegel would continue subsequently). Similarly, Novalis
Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who can in many ways be seen as
associate members of German Romanticism.
In addition to all of these philosophical achievements, the German
Romantics were also profoundly concerned with poetry or literature (and
to a significant extent the arts more broadly as well). Several aspects of this
preoccupation can be distinguished. First, they aimed to overcome the
“old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” of which Plato had already
written in the Republic (607b) in a very radical way, namely by effecting a
sort of synthesis between philosophy and poetry, or science and art. As
Friedrich Schlegel put it in the Athenaeum Fragments (1798), Romanticism
aims “to bring poetry and philosophy in contact” (KFSA 2, no. 116, cf.
no. 451), “in philosophy the only way to science is through art, as the
poet … only becomes an artist via science” (no. 302, cf. no. 255).
This goal can easily be misunderstood. The Schlegels knew enough
about the history of literature (for example, about Homer and the ancient
tragedians) to avoid the mistake that is often made by philosophers even
today of equating literature either with fiction or with mere entertain-
ment. Consequently, their goal of bringing philosophy and poetry together
does not, as it might seem to, imply any trivializing of philosophy.
Moreover, that goal is at least as much about making poetry more philo-
sophical or theoretical as it is about the converse (see on this especially
Athenaeum Fragments, no. 255). In this connection, it is important to
avoid another seductive mistake, one that is likely to be especially tempt-
ing to Anglophone readers: that of assimilating German Romanticism’s
ideal for poetry to the sort of return to nature in rejection of artificiality
that at around the same period constituted the ideal of English Romanticism,
in particular Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798). Instead,
German Romanticism’s ideal for poetry was born out of Schiller’s defense
in his essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry (1795) of sentimental, or in
other words theoretically reflective, poetry as contradistinguished from
naïve poetry, incorporated criticism into poetry, and reveled in the reflex-
ive meta-structure of “poetry of poetry” (see especially Athenaeum
Fragments, no. 238), so that it was virtually the opposite of that English ideal.
The German Romantics’ ideal of a philosophically or theoretically
sophisticated literature already found implementation by themselves and
their circle to some extent, especially in that paradigmatically Romantic
form of literature, the novel, or Roman (note that in German the words
Roman and romantisch are obvious cognates). Examples of this imple-
mentation are Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde, Novalis’s Heinrich von
1 INTRODUCTION 5
von Ofterdingen has already been mentioned, but he was also the author
of the hauntingly beautiful lyric poems Hymns to the Night and other
poems. Madame de Staël’s novel Corinne ou l’Italie has already been men-
tioned, but she was also the author of several other novels and literary
works. Moreover, the broader Romantic circle included a number of peo-
ple whose primary achievements were literary rather than theoretical,
among them Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck, and Clemens
Brentano.
Fourth, leading Romantics were also heavily involved in a (theoreti-
cally–methodologically informed) translation of literary and other works.
For example, August Wilhelm Schlegel and Tieck together published
extraordinarily fine translations of Shakespeare’s plays in German and
Schleiermacher equally excellent translations of most of the Platonic dia-
logues. Both the translation theory and the translation practice of the
Romantics exercised an enormous beneficial influence on subsequent
translation theory and practice down to the present day. For instance, in
the early twentieth century Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig’s transla-
tion theory and their connected translation of the Hebrew Bible into
German were profoundly indebted to them, as is the most important con-
temporary approach in translation theory, Antoine Berman and Lawrence
Venuti’s “foreignizing” approach.
Fifth and finally, it is worth noting that the Romantics’ deep preoccupa-
tion with literature has the potential to be philosophically fruitful not only
for the sorts of reasons that they themselves developed explicitly—for
example, their official project of erasing the division between literature
and philosophy—but also for a reason about which they were less explicit
and of which they were perhaps less consciously aware, namely that litera-
ture can serve a sort of paradigmatic function in relation to a number of
important broad philosophical issues with which they were dealing. For
example, in hermeneutics (the theory and methodology of interpretation)
it makes good sense to focus on literature because literature tends to be
the most difficult type of communication to interpret, so that a hermeneu-
tics that has concentrated on and succeeded in coping with this specific
case has good prospects of being able to cope with all other types of com-
munication as well. Relatedly, but more specifically, the Romantics’ focus
on literary genres as constitutive features of literary works, on their histori-
cal, cross-cultural, and individual variability, and on the severe difficulties
for interpretation to which such variability leads illustrates vividly in micro-
cosm a situation concerning genre that in fact obtains for all forms of
1 INTRODUCTION 7
around the same period, whose seminal role in the development of German
Idealism has been emphasized by Dieter Henrich (Frank accordingly criti-
cizes Henrich for his neglect of Novalis’s contribution). On Frank’s inter-
pretation, Novalis’s version of a realist monism retains a strongly skeptical
character, though: philosophy is in the end only a form of infinite striving,
not a task that can ever be fully accomplished.
The second contribution to the volume is by Andreas Arndt, who is
another of the leading experts on German Romanticism from post-war
Germany. Arndt is the author of the book Schleiermacher als Philosoph
(2013) as well as of numerous scholarly articles on German Romanticism.
In addition, he is the editor of many scholarly editions of the works of
Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher. In his contribution to the present
volume Arndt discusses the concept of dialectic that Friedrich Schlegel
already developed as early as 1796. Arndt argues that, unlike Kant’s and
Fichte’s conceptions of dialectic, Schlegel’s conception of it acknowledged
the validity of contradictions. In this respect, as in some others, it antici-
pated the version of dialectic that Hegel would more famously develop a
few years later. In connection with this topic Arndt also touches on two
further important aspects of German Romanticism that receive fuller
treatment elsewhere in this volume: Romantic irony and the Romantic
ideal of a new mythology.
Johannes Korngiebel is a younger specialist on German Romanticism
from Germany who is currently completing doctoral work on the subject
at the University of Jena—the city that gave birth to German Romanticism
in the late 1790s and early 1800s. In his contribution to this volume
Korngiebel considers the relationship between Friedrich Schlegel and
Hegel in Jena, especially Hegel’s well-attested attendance of Schlegel’s
lectures on “transcendental philosophy” in 1800/1. Korngiebel points
out that there are some striking similarities between Schlegel’s philosophi-
cal approach and that developed later by Hegel, especially in the
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) (incidentally, a subject on which Frederick
Beiser and Michael Forster have amplified elsewhere). But Korngiebel’s
emphasis is instead on Hegel’s disagreements with Schlegel. He argues
that, although Hegel’s well-known explicit critique of Schlegel—espe-
cially, of his concept of irony, which Hegel castigates as subjectivist or rela-
tivist—as it has been explored in detail by Otto Pöggeler and others, only
occurs relatively late in Hegel’s career (mainly in the Philosophy of Right
from 1820 and in a review of Solger from 1828), the earliness of Hegel’s
first encounter with Schlegel’s work in Jena suggests that he must already
10 M. N. FORSTER AND L. STEINER
In his contribution to the present volume Beiser qualifies his own very
positive picture of the political philosophy of early Romanticism in a cer-
tain way, though, especially in connection with the issue of antisemitism.
Beiser argues that the so-called Hochromantik of the period 1803–15,
which included such important figures as Clemens Brentano and Achim
von Arnim, was deeply antisemitic. In particular, he shows that the influ-
ential Berlin intellectual club, the Berliner Tischgesellschaft, founded in
1811, to which those Romantics and Schleiermacher belonged, made
antisemitism a prominent part of the German nationalism that it champi-
oned in reaction to Germany’s recent invasion by France. However,
Beiser’s case is not restricted to Hochromantik, but also concerns early
Romanticism to a significant extent. For one thing, on Beiser’s account
the ideal of a Christian state that undergirded much of this antisemitism
was largely an invention of Novalis in his Christianity or Europe (written
in 1799; partly published in 1802; fully published in 1826). For another
thing, on Beiser’s account Schleiermacher was not only a founding mem-
ber of the Tischgesellschaft from 1811 onward, but even the early
Schleiermacher of the Letters on the Occasion of the Politico-Theological
Task and the Open Letter of Jewish Householders [Briefe bei Gelegenheit der
politisch-theologischen Aufgabe und des Sendschreibens jüdischer Hausväter]
from 1799, who at first sight seems to be making a strong case in support
of political rights for Jews, was in fact implicitly pursuing an agenda that
was in certain ways antisemitic. (Beiser does not, however, extend this
critical case to certain other early Romantics and allies of Romanticism
who seem to be more unquestionably philosemitic rather than antisemitic,
such as Friedrich Schlegel and Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt.)
At this point our volume turns from contributions that are mainly con-
cerned with philosophy to ones that are also heavily concerned with litera-
ture. Helmut Hühn is another leading specialist on Romanticism from
Germany. He has not only published widely on the subject but also co-
directs the Research Center for European Romanticism [Forschungsstelle
Europäische Romantik] in Jena. In his contribution to the present volume
he considers the German Romantics’ central project of developing a “new
mythology.” He explains the background of this project in the historicism
of the period and in Schiller’s diagnosis of the ills of modernity in his
poem The Gods of Greece (1788). He then turns to an investigation of the
most important versions of such a project, namely those in the Earliest
Program for a System of German Idealism (1796/7) and in Friedrich
Schlegel’s Dialogue on Poetry (1800), in order to show that poetry played
12 M. N. FORSTER AND L. STEINER
a central role in these versions of the project and that their goal was in
important part political. He argues that the project ultimately succumbed
to certain aporias, or deep problems, especially the problem of how, as an
essentially collective possession, such a new mythology could possibly be
brought into existence. However, he also argues that the project and its
failure remain with us as an important part of our intellectual heritage.
Giulia Valpione is a young scholar of German Romanticism from Italy
who did her doctoral work on the subject in Jena. Her contribution to the
present volume focuses on Friedrich Schlegel’s concept of Life and its
significance for his views on both literature/art and politics (for, as she
points out, these two spheres are intimately connected for Schlegel).
According to Valpione’s interpretation, in both of these cases Schlegel’s
application of the concept of Life to the domain in question implies a
conception of the limitations of reason and intelligibility.
Jean-Luc Nancy is a leading French expert on German Romanticism’s
treatment of philosophy and literature. Accordingly, we have chosen him
as our representative of French research on the subject. Together with
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (now deceased), Nancy is the author of the
book L’absolu littéraire (1978), an important work on German
Romanticism’s positions concerning philosophy and literature that has
been very influential not only in France but also in other countries. In
their book Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe devote separate chapters to the
Romantics’ conceptions of a system, the fragment, religion, poetry, and
critique, in each case translating key texts by the Romantics into French
and providing a substantial commentary of their own. Nancy is also the
(co-)author of a number of articles that continue the book’s treatment of
those topics, sometimes in a more contemporary mode, such as the article
on the fragment “Noli me frangere.”
The contribution by Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy that we have selected
for this volume is an excerpt from their chapter of L’absolu littéraire on the
Romantics’ conception of the fragment. This genre, which is paradigmati-
cally exemplified by the Athenaeum Fragments (1798) that Friedrich
Schlegel authored in collaboration with the other leading Romantics, con-
stitutes—together with the novel (the subject of Lina Steiner’s contribu-
tion to this volume)—the Romantics’ most important innovation in
relation to genres or types of writing. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy begin
their contribution with some brief but helpful general remarks about the
Romantics’ conception of the relationship between philosophy and litera-
ture, in which they in particular emphasize that their conception of this
1 INTRODUCTION 13
relationship was neither reductive nor exclusive in spirit. They then turn to
the Romantic fragment itself. They note that this is only one of a number
of genres that the Romantics use. They explain some of its historical back-
ground, especially the work of Nicolas Chamfort. They also carefully dis-
tinguish it from various other sorts of “fragment” that can be found either
in the Romantics themselves or in other sources—such as the Romantics’
own rough notes and sketches of projects or the “fragments” of lost works
of the ancients. In contrast with these, the Romantic fragment is charac-
terized by being the way it is deliberately rather than accidentally, standing
in an ambiguous relation to systematicity, (paradoxically) representing
incompletability in a complete way, essentially being plural (part of a col-
lection of fragments), and essentially being a collective achievement (a
product of “symphilosophy” or “sympoetry”).
Rainer Schäfer is an expert on Classical German Philosophy from
Germany who teaches at Bonn University. In his contribution to the pres-
ent volume he considers the relation of the philosopher-poet Hölderlin to
German Romanticism. Schäfer points out that Hölderlin does not himself
explicitly address the question of his relation to Romanticism and he
argues that it was only a certain nineteenth-century scholarly tradition—
saliently including Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, Karl Rosenkranz,
and Rudolf Haym—that generated a sort of myth that Hölderlin was a
Romantic. Schäfer himself holds that Hölderlin is best seen as both
Romantic (in virtue of his focus on such themes as love, nature, and infin-
ity) and Classical (especially in virtue of the seriousness with which he
takes the Greek gods). Schäfer gives a detailed account in accordance with
this picture of Hölderlin’s varying treatments of history from Greek antiq-
uity to modernity in his novel Hyperion (1797/9), his unfinished drama
The Death of Empedocles (1797–1800), and works that date from
1801 onward.
Fred Rush is another leading expert on German Romanticism from the
Anglophone world. His recent book, Irony and Idealism: Rereading
Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard (2016) is the most detailed treatment
available in English of the Romantics’ distinctive concept of irony and its
influence on subsequent thinkers. In a continuation of the latter topic
(that of influence), Rush’s contribution to the present volume considers
Kierkegaard’s response to, and repurposing of, the concept of irony that
he found in Socrates and Friedrich Schlegel. On Rush’s account,
Kierkegaard made irony serve as the means for effecting the transition
from the aesthetic sphere to the ethical sphere—just as he made comedy
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and though he turned his head from side to side he could not get it off.
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then to the horror of Nurse, who had followed him out, she saw him over balance himself, and with a
sudden awful thud, his little figure fell, his head striking the tiled floor of the hall with awful force.
Chris uttered a horrified cry which brought his mother out of her room.
She was the first to reach her darling, and raised him in her arms; but he lay still and unconscious. It
had been so swift, so sudden an accident, that he had not had time to utter a cry.
"No—no—stunned!" said Mrs. Inglefield in her agony, still striving to allay the fears of her children.
Diana watched the limp, unconscious form of her small brother being carried upstairs. Mrs. Tubbs
followed Nurse; Cassy put her apron up to her eyes and began to cry.
How and why did these things happen? They were all so happy a few minutes ago, and now Noel
was perhaps dead and would never speak or laugh again.
She went slowly into the dining-room. The tea was all laid upon the table, the silver kettle boiling over
the methylated lamp. They would have all been sitting round the table now, mother would be pouring
out the tea, Noel's cake would have delighted him. It was a surprise—made by Mrs. Tubbs, who had
put her very best work into it. It was a big iced cake, and had seven candles upon it. In the centre
was a tiny little Christmas tree—a copy of Noel's. Its leaves and branches were frosted with sugar
and a robin perched on the topmost branch. In pink letters on the white surface was written:
There were crackers round the table. What fun they would have had! There were jam sandwiches
and sugarcoated biscuits, and coco-nut cakes and shortbread.
Who would enjoy the tea now, when Noel lay dead or dying upstairs?
"Oh, it's awful! awful!" she cried, "worse than anything I have ever thought of or made up for my
stories! And I've spoken so crossly to him to-day, even though it was his birthday! Oh, what shall we
do! What shall we do!"
When Chris returned he found Diana pacing the hall like a demented person.
The doctor followed on his heels, and with two or three strides had mounted the stairs and gone into
the nursery.
"Oh, Chris," said Diana with tearful eyes, "what shall we do? I believe he is quite dead already."
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the doctor's and back, of my cross words to him about the carol. We haven't been kind to him, Dinah
—over and over again we haven't! And we can't ask him to forgive us. And it's his birthday. Do you
think we could pray to God? Noel gets all his prayers answered, he says."
"He's so fond of God," moaned Diana; "perhaps God is very fond of him and wants him in heaven. I
wish mother would come to us."
But it was a long while before their mother came, and when she did, all the glow and brightness of
her face had vanished. She and the doctor went into her boudoir and talked a little, and then he went
away, saying:
"I'll be up the first thing in the morning, but there's nothing more can be done."
"He is very, very ill, dear. It is bad concussion of the brain, and he may be unconscious for a long
time. We must ask God to spare his precious little life."
A choke came in her voice, then she seemed to pull herself together.
"We must have some tea. Nurse is watching by him, and I will go and relieve her soon. Come along."
That was a most miserable meal for both mother and children.
Noel's chair opposite his cake was empty. His cheerful little voice, which was always making itself
heard, was hushed and silent now. Would they ever hear it again, his mother wondered?
"Why has God let it happen on his birthday and on Christmas night, Mums? Any other time it
wouldn't have been so bad."
"Be quiet," said Diana in a whisper, giving him an angry nudge. "You'll only make Mums more
miserable."
"No, he won't, dear. God loves Noel better than any of us. He has sent this trouble to us for some
good reason. We must never question God's will."
The children were silent. They were glad when tea was over, but when their mother left them to
return to the sickroom, they wandered about the house, not knowing what to do with themselves.
Nurse came down at last, and told them that they must keep out of the nursery, as Noel must be kept
as quiet as possible.
"I should go to bed early if I were you," she told them. "Perhaps your little brother will be better to-
morrow morning."
"I know why God has let this accident happen," said Diana to Chris when Nurse had left them, and
they had gone into their mother's boudoir, and sitting down on two chairs near the fire had faced
each other in despairing silence; "it is to punish us. We haven't been good to him. We haven't loved
him, and now God is going to take him away from us."
"We'll miss him horribly if he dies," said Chris. "I wouldn't let him ride my bicycle the day before
yesterday."
"And I pushed him out of the nursery when I was writing," said Diana; "and told him he was a horrid
little bother."
These torturing memories went with them when they went to bed.
For the first time their mother failed to come and wish them good night. Nurse was having her
supper, and Mrs. Inglefield could not leave Noel.
But she did not forget them; only later on, when she did come, they had both forgotten their regrets,
and remorse, in sleep.
The following days were very sad. Noel lay unconscious for two days and two nights; and then when
he was able to eat, and take notice, his memory seemed to have left him. The house had to be kept
very quiet, and for days his life seemed to hang upon a thread.
It was astonishing how many friends the little fellow had. The back door was besieged by the
villagers during the first few days of his illness. Foster took the Christmas tree out of the drawing-
room and planted it in its old bed, but as he did so he was heard murmuring to himself:
"We'll never see his like again. He were too near heaven for a little chap like him!"
Mr. Wargrave, Miss Constance, Ted and Inez, all tried in turns to comfort and amuse poor Chris and
Diana.
As the days went on they began to hope, and when at last the doctor said that Noel was going to pull
through, they cheered up and began to smile once more.
But they were not allowed to see him. Mrs. Inglefield looked worn to a shadow; it was heart-breaking
to her to see her busy chattering little son lying in listless apathy on his bed, only moving his head to
and fro, and hardly recognizing his own mother.
Chris had to return to school before Noel was convalescent. Just before he went his mother let him
come in and see the little patient. Chris could hardly believe that the tiny pinched face with the big
restless eyes belonged to rosy, sturdy Noel.
He stooped over and kissed him very gently, and called him by name; but Noel took no notice, only
moved his head restlessly from side to side.
And Chris went out of the room fighting with his tears. The very next day Diana said to her mother:
"Will Noel never get better, Mums? God isn't answering our prayers. I pray ever so many times in the
day about him."
"Oh," cried her mother in anguish of tone, "don't pray too hard, darling, that we may keep him here.
God knows best. For his sake I dare not pray too earnestly for his recovery."
Diana could not understand this until she talked to Mrs. Tubbs in the kitchen about it.
"Bless your heart, missy, your poor mother is afraid he'll never get his senses again. Some is left
idiots after such a blow in the head. And Master Noel knows nobody yet, and p'r'aps never will."
This was a fresh horror to Diana. It was a good thing for her when Miss Morgan returned and lessons
began again.
But at last steady improvement set in, and Mrs. Inglefield went about with the light again in her eyes
and a smile upon her lips.
Inez came to wish Diana good-bye upon the day when the doctor was for the first time hopeful. She
was going to school, and had been dreadfully distressed about Noel.
"I liked him the best of you," she said; "he was always so funny and so naughty, and yet so very
good. And he talked like an angel. He's taught me more than anybody else, and I'm going to school
with quite a good character."
"I'll write to you, Inez, and tell you about him," said Diana, "and perhaps you'll like me to send you a
bit of my new story sometimes."
They parted. Diana felt very lonely; she had never imagined that she would miss Noel so very much.
And then one Saturday when Chris was home, he and she went upstairs together to sit for a short
time with the little invalid.
He was decidedly better, his eyes were dear and bright, and he was able to talk a little, though his
voice was husky and weak. He smiled when he saw them.
"Yes," said Diana, "we've missed you dreadfully, Noel. It will be nice when you're quite well again."
"I b'lieve," said Noel in his old slow way, "that I've been away to heaven, only I can't remember. I
know I haven't been here all the time."
And Chris and Diana both cried out with all their hearts:
Noel smiled contentedly. Then after a pause he said: "Then will you be kind to my Chris'mas tree?
Will you give him some water and take care of him?"
The interview was over; but Noel began to recover rapidly. It was a happy day when he was
downstairs again: and the first thing he did was to totter out into the garden, and make his way to his
beloved fir tree.
It stood there, looking rather bedraggled, and showing a great gap where the branch had been cut
off.
Noel was distressed at first, and then Chris, who was with him, said:
"He is like a soldier who has lost his arm in fighting for his King."
"And he gave his branch to God for Jesus' birfday." He was comforted.
That same day, Bessie Sharpe came up to tell Mrs. Inglefield that her father had quietly passed
away.
"He were always talking of Master Noel. The last thing he said was, 'Tell Master Noel when he's well
enough to hear it, that my time of waiting is over and I'm going like his Christmas tree, to be taken in
for my Master's glory.'"
"And Mr. Sharpe will be covered with glory," he said. "Everybody who goes to heaven will be like
Christmas trees lighted up. I almost wish I had wented there."
And their mother looked at them with a smile upon her face and deep thankfulness in her heart. She
knew now what had been the purpose in Noel's accident and illness. It was to bring the brothers and
sister closer together, and to bind them in a strong chain of love and understanding that would not
break under any provocation.
"And I want to be here, for I love you all, specially—my dear Christmas tree."
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOEL'S
CHRISTMAS TREE ***
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