School Leadership between Community

and the State: The Changing Civic Role

of Schooling David Lundie
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/school-leadership-between-community-and-the-state-
the-changing-civic-role-of-schooling-david-lundie/
PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY

School Leadership between

Community and the State
The Changing Civic
Role of Schooling
David Lundie
Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship
Education and Democracy

Series Editor
Jason Laker
San José State University
San José, CA, USA
This series will engage with the theoretical and practical debates regarding
citizenship, human rights education, social inclusion, and individual and
group identities as they relate to the role of higher and adult education on
an international scale. Books in the series will consider hopeful possibili-
ties for the capacity of higher and adult education to enable citizenship,
human rights, democracy and the common good, including emerging
research and interesting and effective practices. It will also participate in
and stimulate deliberation and debate about the constraints, barriers and
sources and forms of resistance to realizing the promise of egalitarian
Civil Societies. The series will facilitate continued conversation on policy
and politics, curriculum and pedagogy, review and reform, and provide a
comparative overview of the different conceptions and approaches to
citizenship education and democracy around the world.
 David Lundie

School Leadership
between Community
and the State
The Changing Civic Role of Schooling
David Lundie
School of Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Glasgow
Dumfries, UK

Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy

ISBN 978-3-030-99833-2    ISBN 978-3-030-99834-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99834-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
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

This is not a book about Religious Education. Nonetheless, religion plays

an important role for a number of reasons. Firstly, religious institutions
are imbricated in schooling in England in unique ways—as formal struc-
tures representing local community values, as national level elites influ-
encing policy through formal structures and lobbying, as the ‘sponsors’ of
a large proportion of the country’s state schools and through their histori-
cal influence on the development of policy. Even within church schools,
religious education is often a marginalised and counter-cultural subject
area (Conroy et al., 2014) and it is from these margins that some of the
subtler changes in the motivations for school leadership can be most eas-
ily seen.
Writing this book forced me to find a path between the training I
received in two distinct disciplines. As an undergraduate at the University
of London’s intercollegiate Philosophy programme, through King’s
College London, I was taught to write an argument in 500 words. If the
core of an argument couldn’t be distilled into 500 words, it probably
wasn’t an argument worth making. If words become too cumbersome or
imprecise, better still to resort to formal logic: ¬(∀)a => b ≠ (∀) ¬ a => b.
As a doctoral student working with colleagues in the University of
Glasgow Anthropology department who had never written an anthropo-
logical text that was less than 100,000 words, I was taught the benefit of

v
vi Acknowledgements

thick description—of elaborated fieldnotes, building up in layers of

interpretation from the lowest level of inference. “Mr C was disap-
pointed”. How do I know he was disappointed? From where is that infer-
ence drawn? “Mr C stands at the front of the classroom, arms folded, he
looks down at his watch, commanding silence without a word to the
class. There are intakes of breath. He does not raise his voice, speaks
slowly and does not make eye contact as he reminds the class of numer-
ous previous cases”. Is this disappointment? What role does the perfor-
mance of ‘disappointment’ have as a pedagogical weapon in the armoury
of teachers in this school? How does it impact the social interactions that
follow? How does the Mr C represent his own interactions—with me,
with his peers? Wishing to short-circuit the laboriousness of qualitative
data analysis, sometimes, I want to be Hunter S. Thomson, or Warren
Ellis’ world-changing anti-hero journalist Spider Jerusalem, laying down
truth, stirring the surface of the mass media cesspool just to watch the
rats scurry away from the stench. I hope that in what follows I have found
a voice that hits somewhere between the cold brevity of logic, the forensic
verbosity of the ethnographer and the cynical sensationalist.
My thanks to the many colleagues who have worked with me on the
projects reported in this book, and those who have reviewed chapter
drafts, including James Conroy, Bob Davis, Miyoung Ahn, Kathryn
Wright, Philip Barnes, Linda Woodhead, John Tillson, Joseph Maslen,
Phil Bamber, Andrea Bullivant, Alison Clark, Carly Bagelman, Mike
Ashton, Waqaus Ali, Marian Krawczyk, Ben Franks, Nicole Nguyen,
Sourit Battycharya and doubtless others I have forgotten. To my fascinat-
ing doctoral students for opening my eyes to a whole range of other pos-
sibilities in this field, Khalil Akbar, Sjay Patterson-Craven, Juliet Lancaster,
Muhammad Naeem, Fay Lowe, Anno Bunnik and Benjamin Ollier.
To my loving wife, Tricia, who has been with me from the start of this
journey, and to our son, Gwydion, age six, who presented me with the
best opportunity to succinctly summarise the book after my hundredth
excuse for not playing: “What’s this book about, daddy?”
Me: “It’s about how schools relate to the parents in their communities,
to politicians, and to the churches. And it’s about how that’s changed over
the last ten years.”
“Sounds boring.”
 Timeline of Research

This book draws on empirical data from the following projects:

Full title (where Methodological Funder
Short title different) Duration summary Co-investigators details
Does RE Does Religious 2008–11 Ethnographic James Conroy AHRC/ESRC
Work? Education observations in (Principal Religion
Work? An 24 secondary Investigator) and Society
analysis of the schools across L Philip Barnes Programme
aims, practices the UK; Vivienne large grant
and models of Delphi conference Baumfield AH/
effectiveness with key Nicole Bourque F009135/1
in Religious experts; Bob Davis
Education in Pupil surveys in Tony Gallagher
the UK participating Kevin Lowden
schools Karen Wenell
Educating Educating 2014–17 Ethnographic Phil Bamber Liverpool
Global Global Britain: observations in Andrea Hope
Britain Primary Initial four primary Bullivant University
Teacher schools in the Alison Clark
Education, North West of
Global England;
Learning and Surveys,
Fundamental interviews and
British Values reflective logs
from teacher
education
students;
Interviews with
six school
leaders
(continued)

vii
viii Timeline of Research

(continued)
Full title (where Methodological Funder
Short title different) Duration summary Co-investigators details
Security, The influence of 2016–17 Interviews with British
Safeguarding securitisation 17 mid-level Academy/
and the on spiritual, policy enactors Journal of
Curriculum moral, social in two cities in Moral
and cultural England; Education
development Delphi grant
in England’s conference SG151930
schools with
participants
Westminster 2015–18 Survey of 450 Charles Clarke Higher
Faith headteachers and Linda Education
Debates on parental Woodhead Innovation
withdrawal (Principal Fund
from RE; Investigators) (survey
Headteacher Mairi Levitt only)
interviews Cathal O’Siochru
about Paul Smalley
Collective
Worship;
Analysis of
school
admissions
policies
Religious 2018–19 Analysis of GCSE Mike Ashton Culham St
Education entry data in Miyoung Ahn Gabriel’s
and Social the school Trust
Disadvan census; ‘Research7’
tage Survey of Year 9 grant 280
pupils in
disadvantaged
areas;
Participatory
action research
with teachers
Values to Personal 2019–21 Ethnographic Carly Bagelman Templeton
Virtues Liberty, observations in Phil Bamber Religion
Mutual three Joseph Maslen Trust ‘Self,
Respect and secondary Cathal O’Siochru Virtue and
Tolerance: schools in Lee Shannon Public Life’
From Values England; John Tillson grant
to Virtues Ecological Antonio
Momentary Zuffiano
Assessment of
pupil
responses
across 28 days;
Daily pupil
diaries
 Praise for School Leadership between
Community and the State

“In his book, Lundie walks the path between conciseness and clarity, on the
one hand, and thick descriptions and layers of interpretations, on the other.
The length of the book is closer to the anthropological norm than to the
philosophical argument, but the many arguments within it adhere to the
analytic norm of conciseness and clarity. Once an argument has been laid out –
whether his own or that of someone else – its premises and conclusions are
given thick interpretations, with illustration from the colonial history of
Britain, philosophical sources past and present, large empirical research and
literature. And all this is woven together in a style that engages the reader to
join Lundie on his quest for understanding pluralism, tolerance, spirituality,
and schooling.
Lundie takes the reader along the path between the two traditions where,
looking towards the analytical side many of the pressing issues in contempo-
rary education become crystallized through attention to conceptual differ-
ences between, for instance, toleration and neutrality, and then further
attention to different interpretations of neutrality as to means or ends. But
the issues are not left there but are brought into the messy reality of life itself
which traverses different sectors, operates according to different logics, and
where glaring contradictions are sometimes effectively avoided because some
people have vested interest in not seeing them.”
—Ólafur Páll Jónsson, Professor of Philosophy, School of Education,
University of Iceland

“Lundie provides us with a thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of

how school leaders have been caught up in shifts in political and social views
of schools as sites of civic and community values. He teases apart specific
examples, such as the Trojan Horse Affair in Birmingham, detailing the
changing assumptions in law, policy and practice, and finding the intellectual
fault lines involved. He also places these examples within wider philosophical
and historical perspectives, illustrating how the different conflicting demands
each have their own longer threads. The interaction between religiosity,
schooling and community is particularly richly considered, showing the lay-
ering of policy paradoxes in recent years. The book is of great value to scholars
in education research, policy studies and religious studies, as well as those with
a professional interest in school-community relations, both in the UK and
more widely.”
—Nigel Fancourt, Professor of Law, Religion and Education,
Department of Education, University of Oxford
 Contents

1 Individual
 Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance  1
‘Free Trade and Toleration’ in British India 1833–1947    1
Toleration, Neutrality and the ‘Bristol School’ of
Multiculturalism  12
Multiculturalism in the Brexit Moment   19
Two Tests, Two Paradoxes and Two Biases of Pluralism   25
Toleration and Neutrality   25
Neutrality as to Means or Ends   27
The Epistemic Paradox   28
The Fundamental Values Paradox   30
Constitutive Bias—Defining Community   33
Directive Bias—Teaching ‘for’ Tolerance   34
Works Cited  35

2 P
 ost-Historical Institutionalism 43
On the Notion of Authority   43
From Historical to Post-Historical Institutionalism   52
Towards a Philosophy of Bureaucracy   67
Choice and Diversity, the Problem of a Marketplace for Values
Education  76
Works Cited  78

xi
xii Contents

3 L
 eadership and Community 85
Religious Education and Community Cohesion   85
Does Religious Education Work?   89
Revisiting Does RE Work? Ten Years on  101
From Community Cohesion to ‘Mere’ Tolerance  119
Works Cited  122

4 Schools,
 Leadership and the Law129
Mediating Law: The Inspectorate and the Courts  129
The Trojan Horse  137
Researching Security and Schooling  146
Becoming Post-Institutional  162
Works Cited  166

5 School
 Leadership and the Market173
Public Choice Economics  173
Communities, Academies, Faith and Business  185
The Market and Mid-Level Policy Enactors  194
Works Cited  197

6 Leadership
 and the Political State203
Mediating Teacher Agency Through School Strategy  203
Theorising the Political Sector, Liberty and Liberalism in the
Fundamental British Values  232
Works Cited  240

7 C
 onclusions247
Mapping the Politicisation of School Values Through
Marketisation 247
Theorising Multi-Agency Working  252
Researching Institutional and Post-Institutional Logics in
Education 253
Works Cited  255
 Contents xiii

8 Epilogue—From
 the Political to the Undifferentiated257
School Values in the COVID-19 Pandemic Moment  257
From British Values to Personal Development  259
Works Cited  265

W
 orks Cited267

I ndex301
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Wall display in the corridor of a Catholic secondary school in

London91
Fig. 3.2 Mapping the authenticity gap in curriculum development and
support116
Fig. 4.1 Curricular and security models of prevent work in schools
(Lundie, 2017b, p. 11) 157
Fig. 6.1 Survey pre- and post-test: beginning teachers’ confidence in
teaching the fundamental British values 219
Fig. 6.2 Visual source, wall display in School M, Educating Global
Britain, 2016 224
Fig. 6.3 Agency and awareness in relation to three themes identified in
Educating Global Britain study 228
Fig. 6.4 Visual source, detail from a wall display in secondary school,
Values to Virtues study, 2021 229
Fig. 7.1 Sectoral shifts in mid-level policy enactors responsible for
recontextualisation and recomposition of policy agendas in
English schools from international to local levels 251

xv
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Kojève’s four notions of authority 58

Table 2.2 Comparative table of institutionalist, historical and post-
historical sectoral logics 71
Table 6.1 Available datasets from each participating school, Educating
Global Britain study, 2017 212

xvii
 Introduction: What Is Philosophy
of Education For?

This book attempts to trace the changes in the governance, inspection

and practice of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education in England’s
schools, making explicit a sometimes imperceptible shift which has
occurred over the second decade of the twenty-first century. Writing up
my doctoral research into the contribution of Religious Education to
community cohesion in 2011, after then Prime Minister David Cameron’s
Munich security conference speech, in which he proclaimed the death of
official state multiculturalism, it seemed that my research had come all
too late, a minor historical footnote in a dead policy agenda.
Then, in 2014, the Trojan Horse moral panic in Birmingham schools
brought community cohesion back to the forefront of educational think-
ing, though rebranded under the rubric of promoting ‘fundamental
British values’. In this case, as in many other international comparative
cases (Stonebanks, 2019; Ghosh et al., 2017), an information gap was
reinscribed as a security gap, leading to the application of techniques of
governance derived from the security sector to solve educational and soci-
etal problems. These problems were exacerbated by a context of rapid
change in the management and governance of education (Arthur, 2015).
This book draws on an assemblage of studies undertaken in this new,
shifting, emergent context for values education in English schools: sur-
veys, interviews and diaries of trainee primary teachers to understand

xix
xx Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For?

their emergent understandings of “British values” (Bamber et al., 2018);

interviews with consultants and trainers helping schools to understand
their duties under the Prevent counter-extremism policy (Lundie, 2019);
surveys to gauge leaders’ approaches to parents’ requests to withdraw
their children from Religious Education (Lundie & O’Siochru, 2019)
and analyses of key media, legal and policy events (Lundie, 2017a). What
links these studies is a concern with the implicit values and assumptions
which are co-constructed in the dialogic space between policy-makers
and policy-enactors.
In her book, What Is Philosophy For? veteran philosopher Mary Midgley
draws our attention to philosophy’s task in making explicit the subtle
mass of unstated assumptions, the mental maps and pictures which form
the backdrop to social life. Philosophy “is the way in which we service the
deep infrastructure of our lives—the patterns that are taken for granted
because they have not really been questioned” (Midgley, 2018, p. 64).
Philosophy necessitates more than a technical obsession with definitions
and logic puzzles; its purpose is to connect a coherent world picture,
making sense of the various disparate facts, figures and findings from the
studies mentioned above.
It is possible to advance three distinct conceptions of the ‘philosophy
of education’ as a field. The first of these, and the most precise, aims at
analytical precision in the definition of key terms in the field of educa-
tion. This conception of philosophy of education debates the normative
criteria which can furnish definitions of a good (or acceptable) education.
An example is provided by Michael Hand, who argues for an ‘epistemic
criterion’ for directive moral teaching, roughly, that we should only teach
as uncontroversially true, that which is known to be true (Hand, 2008).
Many philosophers of education (John White, John Tillson, Amato
Nocera, to name a few) have subsequently debated both the validity of
this criterion—whether it is an appropriate standard to hold in moral
education, or whether some criterion of broad societal consensus or
authenticity might make it acceptable to teach children to hold some
belief or other—and the definition of the criterion—what does it mean
to say that a proposition is known to be true? Such debates, and the ana-
lytical precision with which they are conducted, are indeed important to
the field. I acknowledge a debt to the analytical tradition, both from my
 Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For? xxi

undergraduate philosophical education in the University of London, and

from many fascinating discussions with my former colleague John Tillson
at Liverpool Hope University. Mediating between such analytical preci-
sion and the messiness of data about the lived experience of teaching
values in schools, however, is a task which eludes my philosophical skills.
A second conception of the philosophy of education, roughly corre-
sponding to the German concept of pädagogik, is practised by those mas-
ters of phenomenological pedagogy. Here, the philosopher of education
attempts a rich description of the human relationality involved in the acts
of teaching and learning. Whereas the analytical conception lends itself
to the creation of general rules which can govern educational policy-­
making, the aim of the phenomenologists is to enter deeply into philoso-
phy. “The art of criticism is to focus and hit your mark, even at a dire cost
to yourself ” (Rocha, 2017). While my own training in the philosophy of
education owes much to two masters of this art, Bob Davis and James
Conroy at the University of Glasgow, with whom I co-authored Does RE
Work? I doubt that I have the relational closeness to educational leaders
to do justice to such an approach in this volume.
A third, heuristic conception, both humbler and wider than the two I
have attempted to sketch out above, aims to provide a language with
which to map the kinds of images and pictures Midgley alludes to.
Among such heuristic philosophies may be count Gert Biesta’s influential
three purposes of education: socialisation, subjectification and qualifica-
tion, Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, and Carol Dweck’s now
globally successful distinction between ‘fixed’ and ‘growth’ mindsets.
Such heuristics provide us with a language with which to deliberate about
education. They make no claim at objectivity—the value of Gardner’s
multiple intelligences lies in their pragmatic usefulness for the teacher,
not in whether there exists some objectively proven neurological quality
which is known to be physical intelligence, but whether such a concept is
useful to the teacher who wants to nurture the talents of all of her pupils.
While analytical philosophy paints in straight lines of demarcation, and
phenomenological pedagogy attends, like any great artist, to the fine
detail of the painting, heuristic philosophy of education necessarily paints
in broad brushstrokes. It is this third, heuristic approach that I attempt in
what follows.
xxii Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For?

This heuristic philosophy of education proceeds through the process

Karl Weick terms ‘descriptive flux’: alternating between processes of deno-
tation—the stripping away of extraneous meanings, arriving at the thing
itself, and connotation—the multiplication of meanings and allusions,
building up a rich description of the thing in its networked meanings
(Weick, 1989). Theorising education involves combining a cue—some
factor under investigation, in this case leadership, a frame—some suffi-
ciently broad range of conditions in which the theory is assumed to hold,
in this case school values, and a connection (Weick, 1995). Understanding
the nature of this connection involves an interdisciplinary approach, at
times taking the philosopher’s analytical scalpel to strip away extraneous
meanings, at times having recourse to sociological research data, policy,
media and historical narratives to understand how meaning is enmeshed
in complex social structures and shared understandings.

The Mexican Sierra [a fish] has 17 + 15 + 9 spines in the dorsal fin. These
can easily be counted. But if the Sierra strikes hard on the line so that our
hands are burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in
over the rail, his colours pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new
relational externality has come into being—an entity which is more than
the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of
the Sierra unaffected by the second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory,
open an evil-smelling jar, remove a stiff colourless fish from the formalin
solution, count the spines, and write the truth… There you have recorded
a reality which cannot be assailed—probably the least important reality
concerning either the fish or yourself. It is good to know what you are
doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and recorded
in his experience many lies. The fish is not that colour, that texture, that
dead, nor does he smell that way. (Steinbeck, 1951, p. 5)

It is the relational externality of leadership, values and the peculiar

political context of Britain, or more specifically, England in the second
decade of the twenty-first century which is the subject matter of this
book. As such, a test of its efficacy is whether the language and concepts
explored and developed herein possess ‘fertility’ (Barbour, 1990), the
promise for encouraging an ongoing programme of action, reflection and
investigation to aid practitioners.
 Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For? xxiii

The principal heuristic which I adopt is drawn from securitisation

theory. In developing a model to explain the different overlapping insti-
tutions and imperatives which make up the world of international poli-
tics, Buzan, Waever and de Wilde present a model of human security
made up of five sectors: military, political, societal, economic and envi-
ronmental (Buzan et al., 1997); this model is developed in more detail in
Chap. 2. My principal argument is that over the past decade the educa-
tion system has seen a ‘securitising move’, shifting the focus for policy
and inspection around values away from the logic of the societal sector—
concerned with the preservation of ‘we identities’: nationality, ethnicity,
language, religion, community—and towards the logic of the political
sector, concerned with governmental institutions and the binding idea of
the state. Through a series of policy case studies, this book will trace these
logics at work in reframing and reshaping the relationship of schools to
society and the state.
The logic of the economic sector also looms large in the context of the
neoliberation of English schooling. Increasingly, when considering ques-
tions of ethos and values, school leaders enter not into a community of
local leaders and parent governors, but a marketplace of consultants,
resources and third sector partners each trying to ‘sell’ their vision of val-
ues. Attention will be paid to the importance of these mid-level policy
enactors (Singh et al., 2013) in helping school leaders to interpret and
enact policy, and the ways that this depends on how leaders are posi-
tioned relative to the ‘hard’ end of institutional politics, the views of the
communities they serve, and the logic of market choice.
I have not, however, adopted the approach to education, neoliberalism
and securitisation drawn from the critical sociology of Michel Foucault,
which has tended to dominate the field. Foucauldian analysis exposes the
resignifications and labilities of policy discourse, making evident the ratio-
nales and inequities masked by shared discourse (Savage, 2013). This
approach is therefore amenable to understanding power and control at the
‘chalk face’ of enacted educational practice. Power and its exercise are
often reduced, in this analysis, to a theoretical imaginary or structural
abstraction (Landahl, 2013), distinct from the enacted practices of policy-­
makers and the meso-level enactors through which policy is mediated
towards practitioners. Emphasising the ordering of the visible and the
xxiv Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For?

invisible (Piro, 2008) Foucault’s archaeologies of power excavate the rela-

tionship between the epochal defining forces of technocracy and neoliber-
alism and the minutiae of lived individual experience. This approach
encounters problems in accounting for the multiplicity of real-life indi-
viduals who inhabit the layers between these high-level abstractions and
the day-to-day world of education practice. Instead, my approach aims to
take seriously the agency of politicians, inspectorate, professional net-
works, local authorities, academy trusts, churches and a multitude of other
mediating bodies. Rather than merely seeing these as ‘invisible’ presences
in the neoliberating of the classroom, an approach capable of offering a
fertile language for guiding leadership needs to pay attention to the spe-
cific loci of policy enactment, hence the adoption of a more critical realist
approach to power and control invested in mid-level policy enactors.
Further, in these processes of enactment, individuals draw upon differ-
ent moral languages and logics to understand their place, role and agency.
These different moral languages have real-world consequences. Following
the decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle in spite of known
flaws, leading to its explosion with the loss of all crew in 1986, NASA
commissioned the ethnographer Diane Vaughan to carry out the kind of
rich, qualitative analysis which disrupts the scientific norms of engineers,
offering insight into the ways these norms themselves contribute to
decision-­ making. In Vaughan’s analysis, one critical factor in the
Challenger launch decision was that engineers were asked to think with
different ‘hats’, to consider the financial perspectives of managers, or the
public affairs perspectives of those negotiating NASA’s funding with poli-
ticians (Vaughan, 1996). Through attentiveness to the visible, rather than
invisible, practices of agency in its enactment, and by treating partici-
pants’ accounts with sincerity, rather than seeking to ‘unmask’ these
invisible forces (Stengers, 2003), this account highlights the ways school
leaders have been made to adopt different ‘hats’—as CEOs, as consum-
ers, as advertisers—relative to a range of interlocutors from different sec-
tors, and how those interlocutors, too, have changed, often through
situational changes of role, sector and funding arrangements rather than
wholesale changes of personnel.
At the political level, the rise of ‘new nationalisms’ in the second decade
of the twenty-first century has seen a renewed global policy discourse on
 Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For? xxv

the nature and role of education for global citizenship (Bourn et al.,
2017). Educating for tolerance is among the success indicators for the
UNESCO sustainable development goals; however, a growing concern
for national, even nationalistic values within schools and education pol-
icy has seen a turn against the previous decade’s ‘global turn’ (Mannion
et al., 2011; Bamber et al., 2018). The announcement, in the run up to
the 2020 Presidential election in the United States, of a commission to
promote ‘patriotic education’ is just the most egregious example of the
normalisation of a nationalistic turn in education.
Drawing on the history of British educational interventions in India
under Imperialism, Chap. 1 theorises the separations of religion from
materiality and from fundamental values which are necessary before a
concept of ‘religious neutrality’ can be advanced. These separations leave
open a number of questions as to the purpose and practice of tolerance or
neutrality—whether this is to be understood as an indifferent ‘letting
alone’, a precondition for the authentic choice of a pre-defined good, or
the valorisation of pluralism as a good. This last conception is a corner-
stone of British multicultural political philosophy, and played an impor-
tant role in setting out the context of ‘community cohesion’ policy, which
came to characterise the New Labour years in English politics (1997–2010).
By exploring the origins of these ideas in colonial pragmatism, this chapter
problematises the assumption that neutrality is necessarily motivated by a
multicultural politics of recognition. It poses a number of conceptual
questions which the rest of the book seeks to answer.
Chapter 2 goes on to set out the theoretical apparatus for a philosophy
of administration which will be used to answer these conceptual ques-
tions. Drawing on a concept of recognition developed by Alexandre
Kojève in his post-historical reading of Hegel, the chapter argues that
many of the traditional structures and logics associated with the political
sector no longer function in the way they are commonly understood. In
place of Kojève’s pessimistic ‘post-historical’ thesis, however, the chapter
also draws upon a multi-sectoral analysis from the Copenhagen school of
security studies, positing that this post-historical thesis operates only on
the level of the political sector, concerned with the institutions of the
state. At the same time as this post-institutional focus has come to pre-
dominate politically, spaces for agency continue to operate in the societal
xxvi Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For?

sector, concerned with community identities, as well as new spaces for

agency in relation to the technological sector. The growing role of the
economic sector, and its reductive function, is also explored, drawing on
David Graeber’s critique of private sector bureaucracies.
Revisiting community cohesion in the light of these historical and
philosophical insights, the third chapter focuses on two in-depth case
studies of religious education in secondary schools—from 2009 and
2018. The first of these studies highlights the challenging ways that pupils
and teachers negotiate the communication of personal religious knowl-
edge, identity, otherness and recognition in the classroom, and the poten-
tially distorting role the examination syllabus can play in this. The second
study continues along the same theme, highlighting an increasingly
instrumental focus within the religious education curriculum and
beyond. This focus is increasingly mediated through the gatekeeping
structures of examination syllabus setting, which can create challenges for
authenticity in representing the lived experiences of religious communi-
ties, particularly those experiencing poverty, marginalisation and
disadvantage.
Moving from the religious to the legal sphere, Chap. 4 highlights the
difference between judicial and political logics. Drawing on a key ruling
in R. v Denbigh High School (2006) on the legal status of the school and
its duties towards the community, the chapter exposes the role the inspec-
torate and high-profile media moral panics can play in recontextualising
case law into practice. These processes of recontextualisation, further,
intersect with the law enforcement and security aspect of the political
state through the Prevent agenda. Drawing on findings from a study of
Prevent professionals involved in providing training to schools across two
regions, the role of their post-institutional identities in reframing their
work in a market is briefly explored, before the logic of the market and its
influences on education are more fully elucidated in Chap. 5. Chapter 5
highlights two distinct strands of marketisation through which the fidu-
ciary logic of return on investment is reinscribed into the school system:
a quasi-market of targets and accountability presaged by academisation,
and a private market of mid-level policy enactors created by the hollow-
ing out of public services at a level between central government and the
front line.
 Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For? xxvii

The impact of these changes in the ways community and public sector
actors are positioned by these shifting market logics on education policy
is the focus of Chap. 6. Returning to a focus on school values, and the
shift in language from community cohesion to fundamental British val-
ues, two more in-depth case studies are introduced—from 2016 and
2019. The first of these studies highlights the role and spaces of agency
for teachers and school leaders in relation to the values of their communi-
ties and the values of the political state. The second highlights the role
mid-level policy enactors can play in the recontextualisation and rein-
scription of policy enactment. Drawing on these studies, it is possible to
map the domain of ethos and values as the English education system
undergoes a further shift towards the language of ‘personal development’,
as well as to highlight the ways that language, like in the colonial context
in Chap. 1, can mask as well as reveal fundamental differences in the aims
and purposes of teaching tolerance.

Works Cited
Arthur, J. (2015). Extremism and neo-liberal education policy: A contextual
critique of the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham schools. British Journal of
Education Studies, 63, 311–328.
Bamber, P., Bullivant, A., Clark, A., & Lundie, D. (2018). Educating Global
Britain: Perils and possibilities promoting ‘national’ values through critical
global citizenship education. British Journal of Education Studies,
66(4), 433–453.
Bamber, P., Bullivant, A., Clark, A., & Lundie, D. (2018). Educating Global
Britain: Perils and possibilities promoting ‘national’ values through critical
global citizenship education. British Journal of Education Studies,
66(4), 433–453.
Barbour, I. (1990). Religion in an age of science. Harper.
Bourn, D., Hunt, F., & Bamber, P. (2017). A review of education for sustainable
development and global citizenship education in teacher education. UNESCO.
Buzan, B., Waever, O., & deWilde, J. (1997). Security: A new framework for
analysis. Lynne Rienner.
xxviii Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For?

Ghosh, R., Chan, W. Y., Manuel, A., & Dilimulati, M. (2017). Can education
counter violent religious extremism? Canadian Foreign Policy Journal,
23, 117–133.
Hand, M. (2008). What should we teach as controversial? A defense of the epis-
temic criterion. Educational Theory, 58, 213–228.
Landahl, J. (2013). The eye of power(-lessness): On the emergence of the pan-
optical and synoptical classroom. History of Education: Journal of the History
of Education Society, 42, 803–821.
Lundie, D. (2017a). Religion, schooling, community, and security: Exploring
transitions and transformations in England. Diaspora, Indigenous, and
Minority Education, 11(3), 117–123.
Lundie, D. (2017b). Is RE still not working? Reflections on the Does RE Work?
project 5 years on. British Journal of Religious Education, 40, 348–356.
Lundie, D. (2017c). Security, safeguarding and the curriculum: Recommendations
for effective multi-agency Prevent work in schools. Liverpool Hope University.
Lundie, D. (2019). Building a terrorist house on sand: A critical incident analy-
sis of interprofessionality and the Prevent duty in schools in England. Journal
of Beliefs and Values, 40, 321–337.
Lundie, D., & O’Siochru, C. (2019). The right of withdrawal from religious
education in England: School leaders’ beliefs, experiences and understand-
ings of policy and practice. British Journal of Religious Education, 43, 161–173.
Mannion, G., Biesta, G., Priestley, J., & Ross, H. (2011). The global dimension
in education and education for global citizenship: Genealogy and critique.
Globalisation, Societies and Education, 9, 443–456.
Midgley, M. (2018). What is philosophy for? Bloomsbury Academic.
Piro, J. (2008). Foucault and the architecture of surveillance: Creating regimes
of power in schools, shrines and society. Educational Studies, 44, 30–46.
Rocha, S. (2017). Tell them something beautiful: Essays and ephemera. Wipf
and Stock.
Savage, G. (2013). Tailored equities in the education market: Flexible policies
and practices. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,
34, 185–201.
Singh, P., Thomas, S., & Harris, J. (2013). Recontextualising policy discourses:
A Bernsteinian perspective on policy interpretation, translation, enactment.
Journal of Education Policy, 28, 465–480.
Steinbeck, J. (1951). Log from the Sea of Cortez. Penguin.
Stengers, I. (2003). Cosmopolitics II. University of Minnesota Press.
 Introduction: What Is Philosophy of Education For? xxix

Stonebanks, C. D. (2019). Secularism and securitisation: The imaginary threat

of religious minorities in Canadian public spaces. Journal of Beliefs and Values,
40, 303–320.
Vaughan, D. (1996). The challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture and
deviance at NASA. University of Chicago Press.
Weick, K. (1989). Theory construction as disciplined imagination. Academy of
Management Review, 14, 516–531.
Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage.
 1
Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect
and Tolerance

‘Free Trade and Toleration’ in British India

1833–1947
The articulation of a requirement in the 2012 Teachers Standards and
2014 Ofsted Inspection Handbook that schools promote the ‘fundamen-
tal British values’ of democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual
respect and tolerance for the beliefs of others represented a point of
departure from earlier approaches to school ethos and values which had
foregrounded human rights and ‘community cohesion’. Almost immedi-
ately, a significant body of literature problematised the language of ‘fun-
damental British values’, arguing that it contributes to a racialised
(Anderotti et al., 2015) (Smith, 2016), majoritarian (Habib, 2018), ste-
reotypical (Elton-Chalcraft et al., 2017) (Panjwani, 2017), securitised
(Bryan et al., 2020) (Elwick & Jerome, 2019) and nationalistic (Bhopal
& Rhamie, 2014) (Maylor, 2010) discourse on the civic role of school-
ing. These requirements are retained in the 2021 Core Content Framework
for teacher qualification in England, and the most recent Ofsted
Inspection framework, although reframed in subtle ways, as shall be
explored throughout this volume. It is important to consider this point of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

D. Lundie, School Leadership between Community and the State, Palgrave Studies in
Global Citizenship Education and Democracy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99834-9_1
2 D. Lundie

disjuncture, however, as it represented a significant moment in the

reframing of values education in the UK context, as well as an illustration
of wider global trends in the relation between competence, value, identity
and sovereignty.
The near universal criticism for this shift may give us pause to con-
sider—why is there such resistance to the framing of educational values
as ‘British’? What was it about the former framing of these values in terms
of universal human rights and community cohesion that made them so
much more palatable to the teaching profession and the academy? Were
there already flaws in previous policy agendas? What structures led to its
implementation despite these misgivings? What scope do school leaders
find to resist, reflect and redefine this and other policies? How might this
shift be explained in a way that enables leaders to see the opportunities as
well as the threats it holds? In this chapter, I locate these concerns in a
historical concern with the origins of British state involvement in educa-
tion under Imperialism. These historical currents and critiques help to
distil important questions and conceptual distinctions in relation to the
understanding of values and ethos in schools. Tracing these historical ori-
gins through to the multicultural policies of the 1990s and early 2000s,
it is possible to identify two ways of thinking about tolerance—either as
an instrumental ‘letting alone’, or as an authentic engagement with the
positive contributions of diverse cultural resources—these provide a
framework for analysing the impact of cultural shifts in education in the
opening decades of the twenty-first century.
The shift in the conceptual framing of values is deserving of a deeper
historical exploration. Toleration, in particular, has a particularly long
history in the UK, stretching back at least as far as the ‘Glorious
Revolution’ of 1688, when the Act of Toleration (1689) admitted to
degrees of civic participation non-conformist Protestant residents of the
UK, under certain prescribed conditions. Later acts eased restrictions and
penalties on Jews and Roman Catholics. While an earlier history can be
claimed for religious latitude, stretching back at least as far as the
Elizabethan religious settlement (Christianson, 1980), and even further
into the multitude of mendicant and monastic spiritualities which char-
acterised English Catholicism in the medieval period, the Act of Toleration
represents an important departure from attempts to build a
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 3

‘comprehensive’ Church of England embracing diverse theologies (Spurr,

1991). Instead, civic commerce comes to replace the church as demarcat-
ing the limits of toleration.
The history of British state schooling does not begin in 1870 with the
Elementary Education Act, as is often assumed, but in India in 1813,
when the reauthoring of the British East India Company’s charter
required it “to take measures for the introduction of useful knowledge
and religious and moral improvements” (Majumdar et al., 1946). Within
this context, the earlier history of Elizabethan and Restoration era latitu-
dinarianism, which evolved through violent persecution of Catholics and
Puritans alike, is reinscribed with Evangelical and Enlightenment mean-
ings, and lionised as uniquely British while the colonial project is at its
apogee, bringing:

Victories of free trade and toleration, through which Christianity for the
first time in the history of India took its place as the one divine religion,
and because divine, to be commended to every man’s conscience by its own
self-evidencing authority, and sweet persuasiveness alone. No sovereignty
with physical force, no Church with inquisition tortures. (Smith, 1893)

It was on the soil of India that many of the seeds of subsequent British
thinking on public education were first planted. It was on this soil that
many of the pioneers of mass public education in the UK, such as
Alexander Duff (1806–1878) and the ‘monitorial’ system of common
schooling established by Andrew Bell (1753–1832) incubated their peda-
gogies. Among these seeds, we may also count the denominational neu-
trality enjoined by Butler’s Elementary Education Act of 1870, with its
stipulation that religious instruction was not to follow the catechism or
formulary of any one denomination, in language reminiscent of earlier
East India Company missives on religious neutrality in the sub-­continent’s
schools. More than a century later, a similar strand of thinking was to
inspire postcolonial policy on religion in schools in documents such as
Working Paper 36 (Schools Council, 1971) and the groundbreaking
Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of 1975, which sought to marry faith and
toleration in a country rapidly experiencing transitions towards both plu-
rality and secularity. Religious neutrality was enshrined in the
4 D. Lundie

proclamation of Empire in India (1858) which brought to an end the

British East India Company’s rule, but preserved its approach to religious
toleration.
Given this long-standing significance, Smith’s celebration of ‘free trade
and toleration’ as the coadjutors of British Protestant Christian suprem-
acy is worthy of further exploration, as in the late twentieth century the
instruments of colonial political control “come home to roost” (Césaire,
1955). It is from this distinctive ‘British’ tradition that Working Paper 36
responds to the implications of the US Supreme Court decision in
Abingdon School District v. Schempp (1963) which ruled that even a
non-denominational reading of the Bible in a devotional context in pub-
lic schools was unconstitutional, violating the United States’ First
Amendment separation of church and state. The authors of the Working
Paper, in the British tradition of non-denominational religious instruc-
tion, did not point to the Established Church as providing a justification
for England’s schools to continue to teach about religion, but rather to
the need for a new framing which extended this denominational neutral-
ity towards a multi-faith neutrality. In this way, the British model of
Religious Education stands as distinct from either the strong secularism
of French or American public schooling, or the confessional religious
education found for example in the Polish or Finnish contexts. In the
British model, learning about religions has a place in common schooling,
but this is not, and has never been, a process of catechesis in the beliefs of
the Established Church. The complex place of religion in the educational
settlement also includes state funding for faith schools, an act of collec-
tive worship, and a requirement for all schools to attend to the spiritual
as well as moral, social and cultural development of the child. The colo-
nial origins of this complex picture will become clear as the history of the
civic role of schooling unfolds.
Returning to the Act of Toleration (1689), a precondition of toleration
for the Christian churches inside Great Britain had been their acceptance
of the legitimacy of the Established Church. With this provision, the Act
of Toleration brought to an end the often violent and disruptive attempts
to encompass widely divergent ecclesiologies within a ‘comprehensive’
Church of England. This acceptance marked a new separation between
the civic and ecclesial sectors, establishing not communion but
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 5

commerce as the site of civic participation, while retaining barriers to full

political participation for those outside the Established Church.
Abandoning the ‘comprehensive’ model further separated the religious
sector from its political and material context; by enjoining on non-­
conformists the duty not to disturb others at worship, the religious sector
became synonymous with a right to ‘private’ belief. Only once the ‘church’
of private belief was separated from the physical churches which had been
a site of violent iconoclasm and contestation in the preceding century
(Davies, 2015), was it possible to posit a political right to freedom of
religion consistent with societal cohesion.
This language of ‘belief ’, separate both from ‘custom’ and from the
civil law, was imported by the British into the colonial context in India,
yet in that context took on a new complexion, and new complexities.
Britain’s commitment to ‘religious neutrality’ was in some respects its
unique selling point relative to other European powers, Smith’s celebra-
tion of British toleration castigates the ‘inquisition tortures’ which Goa’s
Portuguese Catholic colonisers extended over their new territory (Paiva,
2017). This commitment, however, first presumed a clear delineation of
the ‘religious’ as a distinct sphere of life. In celebrating ‘free trade and
toleration’, Smith, drawing on the earlier British experience, makes clear
that the economic sphere, above all, is not amenable to religious exemp-
tion. While traditional arrangements for the division of the human popu-
lation—both Mughal designations of Muslim and non-Muslim, and
Hindu hierarchies of caste—were permitted to continue under the rubric
of religious neutrality, traditional arrangements for the ownership of land
were reinterpreted, if not thoroughly rewritten, in favour of an English
model of large private estates—a measure which J.S. Mill was critical of,
as shall be seen.
A further separation of sectors was also effected, one which has signifi-
cance for contemporary education—the separation of religion from fun-
damental values. As Bentinck, governor general of India from 1828–1835,
wrote, the East India Company’s government “would only allow tolera-
tion of religious beliefs to the extent that they were humane and conso-
nant with reason and natural justice” (Carson, 2012, p. 201).The ironic
invocation of toleration by Charles Napier, governor of Sindh in relation
to the abolition of sati or widow-burning is illustrative: responding to
6 D. Lundie

some Hindu priests who complained that this was a religious custom,
which the Company was thus bound to respect, Napier retorts:

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile.
But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang
them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect
gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let
us all act according to national customs. (Napier, 1851, p. 35)

The complex way in which sati is reinscribed from religious to criminal

act is explored in detail by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Spivak, 1988) in
order to illustrate the inadequacy of Napier’s colonial framework. Whereas
Spivak draws on the concept of an episteme, or apparatus of knowledge,
to understand this shift, this book draws on the concept of sectoral log-
ics—whereas episteme connotes a comprehensive understanding of what
counts as (valuable) knowledge, I wish to argue that individuals can, and
do, inhabit multiple sectoral logics, holding the demands of each in rela-
tion to the appropriateness of the institution, concept or process at hand.
This separation of religion, first from the civic and political, and then
from custom and fundamental values, sets out a multi-sectoral space in
which ‘trade and toleration’ find divergent justifications. It is into a space
framed by both that the state, philanthropists and missionaries are later
to step, as the project of mass public education gathers pace, both in
British colonial India and back home on the British Isles. It is, rather, the
factors underpinning a shift in the logic of appropriateness, understand-
ing which sectoral logic(s) to apply to educational questions, that this
book seeks to map.
A higher profile example of this separation of religion from fundamen-
tal values occurred in 1806 in relation to the festivities around the temple
of Jagannath at Puri. In a theme which will recur in relation to many of
the contemporary examples in later chapters, sensationalised accounts in
the contemporary British press expressed horror at the phenomenon of
devotees hurling themselves under the cart of the immense wooden murti
of Jagannath. Western observers projected values onto practices, asserting
that the devotees believed themselves blessed to be crushed under its
wheels. Such misreadings, presupposing a Western Judeo-Christian
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 7

fideism, where practice follows doctrine, are sadly still common in some
approaches to teaching about the Dharmic traditions in UK schools
(Insight UK, 2021). The revelation that the priests of Jagannath were
paying revenue to British East India Company in return for investment
in the renovation of their temple was a cause of scandal denounced from
pulpit and press. The missionary Claudius Buchanan first drew attention
to the practice, representing these deaths as both pagan sacrifice (making
a Biblical analogy to the human sacrifices to the pagan idol Moloch) and
suicide. While the magistrate of Puri represented such deaths as a “sad
accident” rather than suicide (Ghosh, 2018), the reality, as with sati, is
that the self-representations of priests and devotees were never sought,
and neither the categories of accident or suicide encapsulate the practice
in their episteme or worldview.
In its response to these scandals, both of the sectoral separations dis-
cussed above are in evidence. In relation to the separation between reli-
gion and materiality, the idea of financial support or taxable benefit from
religious buildings and festivities was to come to an end. In relation to
the separation between religion and fundamental values, as with sati, the
Jagannath case highlights a key difference from the Enlightenment
Protestant context in which British attitudes to toleration first developed.
Christians of all denominations and Jews shared a commitment to a God
who wills the good of his followers, who “desire[s] mercy not sacrifice”
(Hosea 6:6). An implicit foundation of shared fundamental rights set the
boundaries of religious toleration at home, and demarcated the ground
on which the meaning of religious neutrality abroad would be contested.
Drawing on this, and other examples, it can be argued that tolerance is
not a ‘value’ but a practice, underpinned by a series of mutually exclusive
values. Three distinctive threads of value can be identified, intertwined in
such complexity in the writings of colonialists1 that it is impossible to
disentangle motives from excuses. Firstly, the instrumental value of toler-
ance identified by Smith, as a prerequisite for the ‘sweet persuasion’ of
Gospel truth; secondly, a neutrality born of a more authentic openness to

1
I acknowledge a limitation in the presentation of this chapter is that it deals only with contempo-
rary sources written by British colonialists and missionaries, and that in foregrounding policy con-
siderations at the level of colonial administration, I am also complicit in eliding indigenous voices.
8 D. Lundie

cultural plurality, as espoused by British orientalists; finally, the neutrality

of indifference towards the good of the Empire’s Indian subjects.
As these sectoral separations and their educational implications
unfolded, first in India, where Buchanan, upon his return to England,
was involved in the resolution of the Jagannath scandal through a reissu-
ing of the East India Company charter in 1813, which included the
enjoinder to promote “useful knowledge and religious and moral improve-
ments” (Majumdar et al., 1946), and later in the UK, distinctive policy
logics can be seen to unfold; with regard to trade and commerce, distinct
from civic and moral values, and with the scope of toleration narrowly
defined in relation to the religious sector alone. Many accounts of British
public education begin with the 1870 Elementary Education Act, with
the unique place of non-confessional British religious education often
traced to the ‘Cowper-Temple clause’ which provided that religious
instruction would not follow the catechism or formulary of any one reli-
gion (Freathy & Parker, 2013) (Lundie, 2012). The history of tolerance
and religious neutrality in education, however, goes back beyond this,
and the history of public-private partnership in education goes back long
before academisation and the PFI reforms of the New Labour years.
Conflict over community, culture, toleration and nation building in
English schools begins not in the newly funded county schools of 1870s
England, but in 1813 in colonial India.
The philosophical intertwining of free trade and toleration in the
British colonial project finds a famous advocate in John Stuart Mill, who
spent many years of his life in the service of the East India Company.
Bikhu Parekh, one of the foremost writers on multiculturalism in Britain,
takes aim at J.S. Mill’s legacy in India, conflating his views with that of
his father, James Mill, whose historical account of India, true to Spivak’s
characterisation of epistemic violence, dismissed the totality of Hindu
learning and culture as “useless or worse” (Bearce, 1961). Parekh sees Mill
as willing to use the coercive apparatus of the British state to impose on
the people of India a “monistic vision of the good life” (Parekh, 1994),
derived from Western Enlightenment values. While Mill does indeed
write in favour of despotism to uphold rights and enforce toleration
(Tunick, 2006), his preference even here is for “nonauthoritative inter-
vention—giving advice and providing non-exclusive alternatives”
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 9

(p. 598)—for example, the state can force parents to educate children,
but should not claim a monopoly on education.
Mill’s bureaucratic impulses towards India, however, do not merely
amount to a Eurocentric preference for enlightenment despotism. In
leaving his position of many years with the British East India Company
after the proclamation of Empire in 1858, turning down a place on the
Council which replaced the Company, Mill foregrounds the importance
of administrative efficiency (Harris, 1964, p. 191). In Mill’s view, the
trade-focused bureaucracy of the Company tended towards a pragmatic,
utilitarian form of government, which was preferable to an explicitly
political government—whether controlled from London or by indige-
nous democracy—subject to the whim and rhetoric of politicians. Trade
and toleration once again find themselves bedfellows in Mill’s preference
for a bureaucratic state run for the self-interest of investors, if only the
rulers can identify their self-interest with that of the ruled.
An incident in Mill’s career with the British East India Company is
illustrative of a nuance missing in Parekh’s characterisation: the reauthor-
ing of the Company’s charter to include educational provision in 1813
opened the way for public investment and inspection of education some
decades before such provisions would be made in England. A controversy
began almost immediately between ‘orientalists’, who stressed the value
of Indian languages and learning in the education of an indigenous
administrative elite, and ‘anglicisers’ who demanded the assimilation of
educated Indians to English language, literature, sciences and customs.
Governor General Macaulay’s minute of 1835, reserving funds only for
English language education, seemingly settled this dispute once and for
all. A draft despatch of the following year, however, drafted by Mill under
the title “Recent Changes in Native Education” cautions against too hasty
an implementation, and argues for the importance of teaching Hindu
and Islamic legal scholarship for the administration of justice in India
(Tunick, 2006). In relation to this despatch, John Stuart Mill shows a
growing influence of South Asian ideas on his thought, in stark contrast
to his father James Mill.
As would be the case in England some six decades later, the first forays
of the British state into funding education involved a bipartite system,
maintaining existing madrassas and Sanskrit colleges at the same rates as
10 D. Lundie

newly established government schools (Carson, 1999). The support of

schools teaching South Asian religions was a far less controversial move
for the British public than had been the high-profile scandals involving
British East India Company support or profiteering from Hindu temples
and religious festivals. Nonetheless, the notion that such schools may be
concerned only with the education of religious elites may go some way to
accounting for Mill’s apparent ambivalence, and his contested legacy
with regard to Indian education. The criticisms made by both anglicisers
and orientalists against one another seem to focus on the implication that
the education offered by the other leaves the student imprisoned within
a cultural and religious worldview. While orientalists cautioned that
English language education would leave Indians feeling “unnaturalised in
their own country” (Marshman, 1835), anglicisers feared that to leave
out the benefits of English literary and scientific (not to mention reli-
gious) development was to leave the Indian student benighted by the
constraints of their culture. Mill’s ambivalence in this debate may be
accounted for by recognising that he saw the case for strengthening intel-
lectual culture in India, filtering down from elites to the masses, not
merely for reinforcing existing clerical elites (Zastoupil, 1999) whether
religious or administrative.
A further complicating factor in this debate between anglicisers and
orientalists was that the notion of an ‘English’ education was entirely a
new construct of empire. The public school curriculum back in England
remained dominated by the classics, so the General Committee of Public
Instruction (GCPI) which was established in response to this change, and
the curriculum materials it developed, represent the first coherent
attempts to codify English cultural contributions to education. One
example, Richardson’s Poetical Selections (Goldsmith, Gray, Addison,
Pope and Shakespeare) was instrumental in establishing a canon of
English language literature, and a cultural (rather than merely linguistic)
defence of its place in the classroom (Viswanathan, 1989). Whereas the
apparatus of colonial administration affected a separation of religion
from materiality and fundamental values, it also saw, for the first time,
encroachments of the political sphere upon the educational. Both the
practices of cultural toleration espoused by the orientalists and the more
overt assimilationism of the anglicisers, however, admit of the mixed
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 11

motives identified above—both sets of educational outcomes may be

motivated either with a concern for the good of the student, or a purely
instrumental concern with order and profitability among colonial
subjects.
Still more forcefully than on issues of language and culture, Mill cau-
tions against an attempt to introduce the Bible into Madras’ schools
(McCully, 1966): “Just as English Protestants would not want their chil-
dren placed in a Roman Catholic seminary”, Mill contends, writing of
the incident later “we should not expect Hindus to expose their children
to the dangers of being made Christian” (Mill, 1963, p. 125). Such was
Mill’s influence in this matter that the final inquiry into education under
the East India Company in 1853 continued to enjoin “strict neutrality”
on religion in government schools (Keay & Karve, 1959), with neutrality
often interpreted as absence. So comprehensive was the exclusion of the
religious from education in British India that a campaign by the Sunday
Mirror in 1880 bemoans “the tone of the Bengali primers read in our
schools. We are sorry to say, these books totally eschew the religious sanc-
tions of morality, so much so that the word God is not to be found in
their pages” (Murdoch, 1889).
This separation of religion from education was one which was to fol-
low many of India’s former British colonial subjects to the UK during the
1940s–1960s. The 1944 Education Act enacted provisions that parents
may withdraw their children from Christian ‘Religious Instruction’ in the
county school. Intended as a protection for the rights of conscience of
religious (and non-religious) minorities in the UK, the supposition that
withdrawal was a sufficient accommodation to religious diversity meant
that the word God continued to be absent from the educational experi-
ences of many first-generation British children of migrants from the sub-­
continent. This arrangement—confessional Christian instruction for
most, indifferent separation for minorities—continued to hold until the
groundbreaking Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education of
1974 (Stopes-Roe, 1976). This broached the possibility of a multi-faith
Religious Education, with children learning about the range of faiths,
Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Sikh, which were now represented in Britain’s
nascently multicultural second city.
12 D. Lundie

The story of how these changes entered the mainstream of English

religious education is one of uniquely “English compromise, pragmatic,
written by… officials… clear but flexible and inclusive with a set of val-
ues whose origins are unclear” (Emerson-Moering, 2007, p. 11). A water-
shed moment was to come in 1971 with the publication of Schools
Council Working Paper 36: Religious Education in Secondary Schools;
this paper took as its starting point the previous decade’s United States
Supreme Court ruling in the case of Abingdon School District v. Schempp
that officially sanctioned Bible reading or prayer in public schools as “a
religious exercise… that cannot be done without violating the ‘neutrality’
required of the State” (SCotUS 374, 1963). From this starting point, and
the recognition of growing secularity and diversity, the Working Paper
then goes on to construct a new, postcolonial justification for a non-­
confessional, multi-faith Religious Education (no longer titled “Religious
Instruction”) which was later to find its theoretical justification in the
distinction drawn by Michael Grimmitt between confessional “learning
religion”, and the presumed neutrality of “learning about religions”
(Grimmitt, 1987). The language of the separation of religion from fun-
damental values, traceable to colonial policies towards India, found itself
foisted as a defence of the repurposed ‘neutral’ role for religion in
England’s schools, in contradistinction to secular schooling in the
United States.

 oleration, Neutrality and the ‘Bristol School’

T
of Multiculturalism
In making explicit many of these subtle separations—between religious,
political and societal spheres, between the logic of a ‘community of com-
munities’, the liberal logic of individuals in society, and the security
imperatives of the state—it becomes possible, in what follows, to trace
the reframing of schools’ responsibility for the ‘spiritual, moral, social and
cultural development’ of young people in England in the beginning
decades of the twenty-first century. This origin story, drawing on liberal
justifications of neutrality in the history of colonial pragmatism contrasts
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 13

with much contemporary writing on the multicultural politics of recog-

nition. These two distinct approaches force us to pose an important ques-
tion: what is the purpose and meaning of tolerance in education
policy today?
The Parekh report (2000) represents an unique watershed in British
multicultural policy. Unlike its predecessor, the Scarman Report (1981)
which followed racially charged civil unrest in Brixton and Toxteth, and
its successors the Cantle Report (2001) and the Casey Report (2016)
which followed civil disturbances in Oldham and Woolwich respectively,
the Parekh Report represented a proactive attempt to understand the
position of Britain as a multicultural nation, some half century on from
the Windrush and Indo-Pakistani War migrations. Stressing a role for
education in equipping young people “with the essential understandings,
skills and values which they need to play a substantial role in the building
and maintenance of Britain as a community of citizens and a community
of communities” (Parekh, 2000), the report draws upon a conception of
recognition rights, common to Parekh and the “Bristol school of multi-
culturalism” (Levey, 2019). Recognition rights involve appreciating the
values and loyalties held by different communities within the UK, and
are thus distinct from the pragmatic and indifferent neutrality which
enables free trade among individuals.
The early history of “race relations” in the UK had followed a theoreti-
cal trend derived in large part from the discourse of civil rights in the
United States. Tactics such as the boycott of the Bristol Omnibus
Company in 1963 over their refusal to employ non-white drivers, were
drawn directly from the American civil rights struggle; in 1965, following
the infamous Smethwick by-election which saw a Conservative candidate
returned on an openly racist campaign platform, the American activist
Malcolm X visited the West Midlands constituency (Page, 2005). The
passage of the Race Relations Act later that year cemented a sociological
understanding of ‘race’ around a white/black binary, even though early
research showed that young people from Asian and Afro-Caribbean back-
grounds narrated their identities in ways that diverged from this
(MacAnGhaill, 1989). The Scarman Report, published in the aftermath
of the Brixton and Toxteth riots, marked a change in language from “race
relations” to “community relations”. In this regard, it began the process
14 D. Lundie

of bringing into the political consciousness a home-grown school of

thought on the future of multi-ethnic Britain; one which engaged with
the legacy of colonial Britain and its cultural categories.
Born in Gujarat in the autumn years of the British Raj in 1935, Bhikhu
Parekh came to England in the 1960s to study for his doctorate at the
London School of Economics. As Chair of the Commission on the
Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, his influence on education and commu-
nity policy has been profound. Influenced by the work of Canadian polit-
ical theorist Charles Taylor, Parekh’s multiculturalism recognises the right
of cultural groups to enter into public and political debate, bringing with
them their religious and cultural identities and commitments. Going fur-
ther than Taylor’s theorisation of North American secularism (Taylor,
2011), however, Parekh presents a normative defence of multicultural-
ism; in this he approaches cultural diversity as a value rather than merely
a fact (Parekh, 2000). In this respect, Parekh draws on the tradition of the
‘orientalists’ in presenting a multicultural synthesis as greater than the
sum of its parts. This distinctive pluralist framing, drawing on the history
of religious neutrality set out above, positions British understandings of
tolerance as distinct within anglophone secularism.
Another foundational figure in the “Bristol school of multicultural-
ism” (Levey, 2019) Tariq Modood contributed to a series of policy reports
into educational inequalities in Britain between 1999 and 2008.
Modood’s Not Easy Being British (Modood, 1992) captured the moment,
following the controversy over the publication of Salman Rushdie’s
Satanic Verses, when British Muslims began to engage politically as a reli-
gious, rather than racialised, identity group. Like Parekh and Taylor,
Modood is critical of radical secularist approaches to cultural integration,
favouring approaches which respect and acknowledge the sources of cul-
tural knowledge. In this regard he advocates a “normative sociology”
which challenges the ways that knowledge construction can contribute to
‘othering’. For example, if the tools of Western academic sociology are
used only by the Western educational establishment to study minority
communities from the outside, this is unlikely to enrich public or socio-
logical understanding. Once again, such insights echo Marshman’s his-
torically neglected concern about English-educated Indians becoming
unnaturalised within their own culture.
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 15

Three key features of this school of multicultural thought are a recog-

nition of the existing diversities of identity which contributed to the con-
struction of Britishness, such as between Scottish and Welsh identities
(Uberoi & Modood, 2013), advocating an embracing of a pluralistic
notion of Britishness (Modood, 2007). Acknowledging the historic injus-
tice done to minority groups, firstly by older dichotomies of assimilation
and exclusion (Kymlicka, 2003), and also by colonialism, leads to a con-
cern for the positive creation of new forms of belonging. Belonging is as
important as justice (Modood, 2017); “we are over here because you were
over there” (Levey, 2019, p. 4). Finally, drawing on the foregoing concern
with religious neutrality and toleration as the seed-bed of British think-
ing on diversity, British multiculturalists have denied the “mentality of:
religion divides, the secular unites” (Modood, 1992, p. 87), advocating
spaces of intercultural encounter which recognise and celebrate commu-
nities’ religious and cultural distinctiveness. While this school of multi-
culturalism presupposes a liberal state, Parekh is critical of what he sees as
a narrow liberal secularism in Mill, advocating instead for a move beyond
justice to belonging.
In summary, this approach tends to present multicultural identities in
their enacted context, and those contexts are often of temporal and spa-
tial location—associated with specific mass migrations following Britain’s
withdrawal from its colonial conquests in India in 1948, Jamaica and
Uganda in 1962 (Brice, 2010), and twentieth-century industries such as
textiles, which attracted migrants to towns such as Bradford and
Blackburn, with Muslims of Pakistani origin now comprising 30.9% of
the population of Blackburn, Lancashire (Naeem, 2021), one of 26
Parliamentary constituencies with Muslim populations of over 20%. The
maintenance and development of diversity (as distinct from minimising
or assimilating) hinges on a complex interplay of national- and
institutional-­level policies and individual choices, values and preferences
if these are to encourage equal participation in social life (Berry, 2011).
“[G]roupness has a social reality, and the ideas of groups as discrete,
homogeneous, unchanging, bounded populations are not realistic when
we are thinking of multicultural recognition” (Naeem, 2021, p. 30). The
postcolonial context also emerges from this temporal aspect. Rethinking
the national story (Parekh, 2000) involves acknowledging the often
16 D. Lundie

marginalised attention given to minority characters in previous tellings of

that story.
The focus on cultural accommodations has tended to reinscribe the
separation of religion from racial identities. Further, “multiculturalism
presupposes the existence of an overarching framework of shared values
that acts as a linchpin in a multicultural state” (Watts & Smolicz, 1997);
where intra-community dialogue needs to take place, for example in rela-
tion to controversial community practices, these “operative public values”
can be brought to bear (Parekh, 2000, p. 268). The inclusion of religious
identity questions in the UK Census for the first time in 2001 (Naeem,
2021) and as a protected category in the Equalities Act 2010 reflects a
trend of “religification” (Panjwani, 2018) in which cultural identities are
seen as synonymous with religious, rather than racial, class or intersec-
tional identities. Whereas first-generation migrants did not make signifi-
cant political or societal demands (Maxwell, 2006), the Rushdie Affair of
1989 marked a turning point for recognition of religious identities in
intercultural debates, and Muslim identities in particular (Modood,
1992; Weller, 2009). Such an approach stems from allowing groups to
define themselves in their own terms; Islam’s understanding of itself is
not merely as an ethnic marker but a way of life superseding national and
ethnic identities (Afshar et al., 2005) and a “master signifier” (Mura,
2011) uniting communities with otherwise disparate cultural, racial and
linguistic practices. This approach, however, rests on the assumption that
it is possible to identify and enumerate a ‘community’, as well as identify
who speaks for that community and on what authority. In approaching
the question of whether Established Christianity constitutes an alienating
force in British society, for example, Modood and Thompson (2021)
argue against vicarious accounts of alienation, arguing for the need to
understand minority communities’ own accounts of whether they feel
alienated.
It would be disingenuous to present this view of multiculturalism as if
it were something that was ever fully realised, either in British society or
in the politics of the New Labour governments (1997–2010). Nor,
indeed, was it the intention of politicians or theorists to set such features
of British multiculturalism in stone, recognising that multiculturalism is
by definition fluid and dynamic (Race, 2015). Rather, multiculturalism
 1 Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance 17

was both being imagined and deconstructed at the same time; nonethe-
less, these spatial/temporal, postcolonial and communitarian features can
be traced in policy and theory.
Following the assault on a white pensioner in Oldham by three Asian
youths, a demonstration by the far-right National Front on 5 May 2001
became a flashpoint for some of the worst racially motivated civil unrest
in the UK since the early 1980s. Centred around a racially polarised area
of the town, rioting subsequently spread to other Northern English towns
of Bradford, Leeds and Burnley, all of which had diverse but increasingly
polarised populations. Following the events of the summer, a report into
the riots compiled by Professor Ted Cantle (2001) problematised ‘com-
munity fragmentation’—disaffected Asian youth (framed in racial terms)
living parallel lives to their white peers without meaningful interaction.
Similar concerns were voiced around that time by Sir Trevor Phillips,
then head of the Commission for Racial Equality, when he warned that
parts of Britain were “sleepwalking into segregation” (Phillips, 2005), and
such spaces have been described as “failed spaces of multiculturalism”
(Thomas et al., 2018) (West, 2016).
Within months of the Oldham riots, however, agendas were radically
refocused by the response of the UK security apparatus to the events of
9/11 and the subsequent framing of the ‘War on Terror’. While elements
of the community cohesion agenda continued to focus on challenging
far-right racism, discourse shifted from a framing of Asian youth in racial
terms to a focus on religion, and particularly on Muslims (Panjwani,
2017). As I have argued elsewhere (Lundie, 2017), the conflation of race
and religion and the identification of religious education within schools
as the primary site of community cohesion work have led to significant
misidentifications of core problems in educating for a diverse society.
Further, the reactive reframing of these core ideas in the wake of unrest or
the fears generated by a terrorist threat (Miah, 2017) operationalises not
only a shift in language from communities in the plural to society in the
singular, but from society as an imagined community to a stronger role
for the political and security state. The separation of religion from politi-
cal life, and later from fundamental values, opens a space of opportunity
for the identification of fundamental values with the political state.
18 D. Lundie

Such an opportunity has been described as a hardening securitisation

of education (Elwick & Jerome, 2019). The advent of the Conservative-­
led coalition government of 2010 is often taken to mark the end of offi-
cial state multiculturalism in the UK (Cameron, 2011). In place of the
Parekh and Cantle Reports’ emphasis on communities in the plural, the
ideological foregrounding of a ‘big society’ and shared ‘fundamental
British values’ marked a significant change in emphasis. Within educa-
tion, a deliberate disinvestment of resource in subjects taken to represent
a ‘soft’ social curriculum: Religious Education, Personal Social and Health
Education, and Citizenship (Gove, 2010) represented a shift in emphasis
away from education as an instrument of societal construction.
Nonetheless, fierce critics of multiculturalism often deploy its underlying
logic even while rejecting its political implications; the accusatory dis-
course that ‘groups are not integrating’ both accepts and contributes to
social conditions which give multiculturalist assumptions sociological
relevance (Modood, 2013).
Subsequent rioting, initially in Woolwich and Tottenham, but spread-
ing to towns and cities across the UK following the killing of Mark
Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, prompted a renewed focus on race
and inequality. The theme of social interaction and segregation was again
addressed in Dame Louise Casey’s, 2016 report, which emphasised the
importance of flagship Conservative programmes such as the National
Citizen Service in promoting social mixing among young people. Similar
trends followed the ‘Trojan Horse’ moral panic in Birmingham schools in
2014, and these are addressed in more detail in Chap. 4. The latest gov-
ernment report on inequality, by Dr. Tony Sewell (2021) attempts a post-­
racial framing, focusing on geographical inequalities, and the advantages
conferred on some communities by “different cultural patterns and
expectations” (p. 234), hinting at the same utilitarian motivations which
underpinned the selective colonial application of religious neutrality to
preserve economically advantageous cultural practices.
Such contemporary uncertainties urge us to return to a consideration
of the aims and ends of neutrality and toleration, their origins and impli-
cations. Returning for a final time to nineteenth-century India, two dis-
tinct trends existed in British colonial thought on the purposes of
neutrality. For Christian educators such as Duff and Bell, English
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
mis à part que ses dernières lettres, et j’y veux mettre tout, comme
une chose sainte.

Le 1er juillet. — Entendu la première cigale. Quel plaisir c’eût été

de l’entendre à pareil jour, l’an dernier, avec Maurice à ma fenêtre !
Mais nous étions sur la route de Bordeaux dans la chaleur, la
poussière et les angoisses.
L’inattendu et charmant billet de M. Sainte-Beuve ! cet auteur
exquis dont je reçois l’écriture vivante. C’eût été bonheur autrefois,
mais à présent tout porte amertume et tourne aux larmes. Il en est
ainsi de ce billet et de tant d’autres choses que je dois à la mort de
Maurice. Toutes mes relations, toute ma vie presque se rattachent à
un cercueil.

Le 8. — Nous arrivions au Cayla à sept heures du soir, un an

passé.

[Sans date.] — Depuis quelque temps, je néglige fort mon

Journal ; je m’en étais déprise presque, je m’y reprends aujourd’hui,
non pour rien d’intéressant à y mettre, mais par simple retour à une
chose aimée ; car je l’aime, ce pauvre recueil, malgré mes
délaissements. Il se rattache à une chaîne de joies, à un passé qui
me tient trop au cœur pour ne pas tenir à ce qui en fait suite. Ces
pages donc seront continuées. Je les laisse et je les reprends, ces
chères écritures, comme les pulsations dans la poitrine, toujours,
mais suspendues quelquefois par les oppressements.
Le petit cours de mes jours va donc reprendre au naturel. Pour le
moment, j’y note une visite, de celles que je voudrais quelquefois
pour diversion agréable. Quoique ce soit un jeune homme bien
jeune, on peut causer avec lui, parce qu’il a lu, vu le monde, et qu’il
a dans l’esprit une douceur et un aplomb de jugement que j’aime
pour discourir diversement de diverses choses. Nous n’avons pas la
même façon de voir, et mon âge me permettant d’exprimer et de
soutenir la mienne, je me plais à le contredire, par plaisir et par
conviction ; car ce que je dis, je le pense.

Si quelque chose est doux, suave, inexprimable en calme et en

beauté, c’est bien certainement nos belles nuits, celle que je viens
de voir de ma fenêtre, qui se fait sous la pleine lune, dans la
transparence d’un air embaumé, où tout se dessine comme sous un
globe de cristal.

[Sans date.] — Il y a dans la Bretagne, non loin de la Chênaie,

une campagne appelée le Val de l’Arguenon, profonde solitude au
bord de l’Océan, où Maurice a demeuré. Il s’en fut là, à la chute de
M. de Lamennais, et y vécut en ami chez un ami, le bon et aimant
Hippolyte de La Morvonnais. J’aurai toujours souvenir et
reconnaissance infinie de cet accueil et attachement distingué, et de
je ne sais quelle touchante sympathie que m’avaient vouée et
exprimée cet ami de Maurice et sa charmante femme. Nous avons
eu quelque temps des relations suivies avec cette famille et qui se
sont continuées avec M. Hippolyte lorsqu’il eut perdu sa femme.
Après un long silence de deux ans, il m’arrive aujourd’hui une lettre
comme celles d’autrefois, et de plus, hélas ! toute pleine de Maurice
mort. Vous dire comme cela m’a touchée, ce témoignage du cœur,
cette sorte de résurrection d’un ami sur la tombe de son ami ! Aussi
je lui répondrai, je lui dirai pourquoi je ne lui ai plus écrit, pourquoi je
lui ai laissé annoncer cette mort par un journal, car c’est ainsi qu’il a
su la perte que nous avons faite. Je ne me pardonnerais pas cela, si
je n’avais de trop bonnes raisons d’excuses, une fatalité qui a fait
que mes dernières lettres ou les siennes se sont perdues. C’est la
Revue des Deux Mondes qui a porté cette mort, ce deuil à
l’Arguenon, pauvre douce campagne toute remplie de Maurice…
Nous allons voir cela dans une publication de M. Hippolyte, et
qu’il dit qu’il m’envoie avec une autre ; mais je n’ai rien reçu que sa
lettre, qui est assez pour la pauvre sœur de Maurice. Celui-là aussi
m’avait appelée sa sœur : fraternité lointaine, inconnue, mais il
devait venir et m’amener Marie, sa petite fille, que Maurice avait
baisée, caressée au berceau et sur les genoux de sa mère,
charmante enfant, disait-il. Enfant qui m’a préoccupée à côté de sa
mère vivante et morte, que je me faisais un charme de tenir ici sur
mes genoux, rêves et sentiments que cette lettre réveille. J’avais
écrit à cet ami à la prière de Maurice, car de moi-même jamais je
n’aurais eu l’idée de continuer avec lui une correspondance brisée
par la mort de sa pauvre jeune femme. Reprendrons-nous à présent
que moins que jamais je veux des correspondances ? Mais c’est un
ami de Maurice, qui l’a secouru dans le malheur, qui a su l’estimer
son prix, qui lui fut bon de dévouement et de foi, dans des jours
mauvais pour l’âme. C’en est assez, sans compter ce qu’il fait
encore, un article pour Maurice dans l’Université catholique. Oh !
c’en est assez pour que je réponde et avec effusion à cette dernière
lettre. Il est dans mon cœur et dans ce que Dieu m’enseigne de
reconnaître jusqu’aux bonnes intentions des hommes.

Le 18. — Dernier jour qu’il a passé sur la terre.

Le 19, à onze heures du matin. — Douloureux coups de cloche

que je viens d’entendre, au même instant, à la même heure où son
âme quitta ce monde, au même son lugubre et tout comme si cette
cloche eût sonné pour lui à présent. C’était pour une autre mort ce
glas, de retour au même jour, au même instant, que j’entends dans
mon âme tout ce matin. Mon Dieu, quel anniversaire ! quel souvenir
vif et présent de cette mort, de cette chambre, chapelle ardente et
lugubre, de ce lit entouré de larmes et de prières, de cette figure
pâle, de cet in manus tuas, Domine, dit et redit si haut ! Maurice !
Dieu aura entendu et reçu au ciel ton âme qui demandait le ciel. —
Oh ! adieu encore, et aussi amèrement qu’alors ; le temps et la mort
t’ont transposé, mais non changé dans mon cœur. Toujours là, frère
bien-aimé ! autrefois pour mon bonheur, à présent pour mes larmes,
qu’autant que possible je transforme en prières. C’est le meilleur
témoignage d’amour que les chrétiens puissent donner. Ce jour
donc ne sera qu’un pieux recueillement dans la mort ; dans cette vie
au-dessus de celle où nous sommes, bien cachée, bien
mystérieuse, impénétrable, mais réelle, mais révélée et établie sur la
foi, sur la foi, la base de ce que nous espérons et la conviction de ce
que nous ne voyons pas. Bienheureux ceux qui croient ! que je
voudrais que tous pussent croire, que je le voudrais ! et que
d’adorables mystères fussent adorés de tous les hommes ! Les
vérités révélées ont la propriété des abîmes : elles sont sans fond et
sans lumière, c’est ce qui fait le mérite de la foi. Mais on y est
conduit par des routes sûres et lumineuses, qui sont la parole de
Dieu et les témoignages rendus à cette parole. C’est ce qui fait que
la soumission aux vérités de la foi est une obéissance solide et
raisonnable. Quand on considère ces choses saintes, on les voit
ainsi.
 XI

Le 26 juillet [1840]. — C’est une bien triste et précieuse relique

que l’écriture des morts, reste, ou plutôt image de leur âme qui se
trace sur le papier. Depuis plusieurs jours, j’ai regardé ainsi mon
cher Maurice dans ses lettres que j’ai mises par ordre, paquet
funèbre où tant de choses sont renfermées. O la belle intelligence, et
quelle promission de trésors ! Plus je vis et plus je vois ce que nous
avons perdu en Maurice. Par combien d’endroits n’était-il pas
attachant ! Noble jeune homme, si distingué, d’une nature si élevée,
rare et exquise, d’un idéal si beau, qu’il ne hantait rien que par la
poésie : n’eût-il pas charmé par tous les charmes du cœur ?
C’est bien vouloir s’enivrer de tristesse de revenir sur ce passé,
de feuilleter ces papiers, de rouvrir ces cahiers pleins de lui. O
puissance des souvenirs ! Ces choses mortes me font, je crois, plus
d’impression que de leur vivant, et le ressentir est plus fort que le
sentir. J’ai éprouvé cela maintes fois.

Le 28. — Deux petits oiseaux, deux compagnons de ma

chambrette, les bienvenus, qui chanteront quand j’écrirai, me feront
musique et accompagnement comme les pianos qui jouaient à côté
de Mme de Staël quand elle écrivait. Le son est inspirateur ; je le
comprends par ceux de la campagne, si légers, si aériens, si
vagues, si au hasard, et d’un si grand effet sur l’âme. Que doit-ce
être d’une harmonie de science et de génie, sur qui comprend cela,
sur qui a reçu une organisation musicale, développée par l’étude et
la connaissance de l’art ? Rien au monde n’est plus puissant sur
l’âme, plus pénétrant. Je le comprends, mais ne le sens pas. Dans
ma profonde ignorance, j’écouterais avec autant de plaisir un grillon
qu’un violon. Les instruments n’agissent pas sur moi ou bien peu. Il
faut que j’y comprenne comme à un air simple ; mais les grands
concerts, mais les opéras, mais les morceaux tant vantés, langue
inconnue ! Quand je dis opéras, je n’en ai jamais ouï, seulement
entendu des ouvertures sur les pianos. Parmi les fruits défendus de
ce paradis de Paris, il est deux choses dont j’ai eu envie de goûter :
l’Opéra et Mlle Rachel, surtout Mlle Rachel, qui dit si bien Racine, dit-
on. Ce doit être si beau !
Une autre personne encore que j’aurais eu plaisir à voir, et que,
certes, je ne me suis pas défendue, c’est Mme ***, cette gracieuse et
charmante femme, dont on m’a dit tant de bien, et ce mot qui suffirait
pour m’attirer : « Elle est d’une bienveillance universelle. » Qualité si
douce et si rare, surtout dans une femme du monde ! La
bienveillance, c’est le manteau de la charité jeté sur ce qu’on voit de
pauvre et de nu, comme fait une âme bonne et que la bonté arrête
sur cette pente à railler que nous suivons communément, Mme ***
montre là un trait de distinction remarquable et charmante, car rien
ne plaît comme un esprit bienveillant, rien ne me donne l’idée de
Dieu sur la terre comme l’intelligence et la bonté. J’aime au suprême
de rencontrer ces deux choses ensemble, et d’en jouir en les
goûtant de près. Voilà ce qui m’attirait vers une personne que
probablement je ne verrai jamais. Je ne sais quel mystérieux destin
et enchaînement de choses m’a toujours fait m’occuper d’inconnus
sans m’y tourner de moi-même, et que par les rapports
indépendants de ma volonté. La vie d’une certaine façon se fait sans
nous ; quelqu’un au-dessus de nous la dirige, en produit les
événements, et cette pensée m’est douce, me rassure de me voir
dans les soins d’une providence d’amour. Quelque malheureux que
soient les jours, je dis et je crois qu’ils ont un bon côté que j’ignore :
celui qui est tourné vers l’autre vie, l’autre vie qui nous explique
celle-ci, si mystérieusement triste. Oh ! là-haut, il y a quelque chose
de mieux.

Le 30. — Un suicide à Andillac. L’affreux suicide venu jusqu’ici !

Pauvres malheureux paysans qui se mettent au courant du siècle, à
oublier Dieu et à se détruire !
Deuxième mort depuis celle du 19 juillet ; mais nous n’aurons pas
la douleur de voir ces deux tombes voisines, un mauvais mort à côté
de notre Maurice béni. J’en aurais eu de la peine, quoique ceci ne
touche qu’à la mémoire ; quant à l’âme, il est incompréhensible ce
qu’elle doit souffrir parmi les réprouvés en enfer, qui n’est que le lieu
de réunion de tout ce que la terre a porté d’infâme et de méchant.
Un des grands supplices, c’est de s’y trouver en mauvaise
compagnie pour toujours. Que Dieu nous en préserve !
Oh ! la douleur de craindre pour le salut d’une âme, qui la peut
comprendre ! Ce qui fit le plus souffrir le Sauveur, dans l’agonie de
sa passion, ne fut pas tant les supplices qu’il devait endurer, que la
pensée que ses souffrances seraient inutiles pour un grand nombre
de pécheurs, pour ces hommes qui ne veulent pas de rédemption ou
ne s’en soucient pas. La seule prévoyance de ce mépris et de cet
abandon était capable de rendre triste à la mort l’homme-Dieu.
Disposition à laquelle participent plus ou moins, suivant leur degré
de foi et d’amour, les âmes chrétiennes.

Le 4 août. — Anniversaire de sa naissance, si près de celui de sa

mort, deux dates qui se touchent. Que ç’a été fait vite de sa vie, mon
pauvre Maurice ! Je ne sais tout ce que je voudrais dire, et je ne dirai
rien ; la pensée en certains moments ne peut pas venir. Je vais lire
le Dernier jour d’un condamné, un cauchemar, m’a-t-on dit.
Qu’importe ! je m’ennuie tant aujourd’hui, qu’il n’est rien de trop lourd
pour écraser cela, rien d’effrayant. Allons !
Je n’ai pu soutenir cette lecture, non par émotion, n’en étant pas
encore émue, mais par dégoût de l’horrible que j’ai senti dès l’abord
aux premières pages. Livre fermé. Ce n’était pas ce qu’il fallait à ma
disposition d’âme : je m’étais trompée en cherchant un poids, tandis
qu’il faut s’alléger alors. La prière me désaccable, une conversation,
le grand air, les promenades dans les bois et champs. Ce soir, je me
suis bien trouvée d’un repos sur la paille, au vent frais, à regarder
les batteurs de blé, joyeuses gens qui toujours chantent. C’était joli
de voir tomber les fléaux en cadence et les épis qui dansent, des
femmes, des enfants séparant la paille en monceaux, et le van qui
tourne et vanne le grain qui se trie et tombe pur comme le froment
de Dieu. Ces paisibles et riantes scènes font plaisir et plus de bien à
l’âme que tous les livres de M. Hugo, quoique M. Hugo soit un
puissant écrivain, mais il ne me plaît pas toujours. Je n’ai pas lu
encore sa Notre-Dame, avec l’envie de la lire. Il est de ces désirs
qu’on garde en soi.

Le 5. — Que n’est-il venu plus tôt le poëte de la Bretagne, le

chantre de la Thébaïde des Grèves, le solitaire ami de Maurice ! Que
n’est-il venu du temps que Maurice vivait, alors que je sentais avec
bonheur ! Ses poésies me sont néanmoins agréables en ce qu’elles
viennent du Val de l’Arguenon, qu’elles sont religieuses, que Dieu et
Maurice s’y trouvent. Il y a deux ans seulement, tout cela m’eût bien
fait plaisir. Que les temps sont changés ! ou plutôt, que notre âme
change sous les événements ! Ainsi, la vie se fait différente de jour
en jour, toute tranchée de diverses choses et de divers sentiments,
si bien qu’un certain espace ne ressemble plus à l’autre, qu’on ne se
reconnaît pas d’ici-là, qu’on a peine à se suivre, variable et
transitoire nature que nous sommes. Mais la transition finira, et nous
mènera là où nous ne changerons plus. O permanente vie du ciel !
Mon poëte breton, à propos de qui me viennent ces pensées, est
cependant bien le même nébuleux rêveur que par le passé, chantant
vaguement dans le vague. J’ai une cousine à qui ces poésies feront
fête ; c’est son charme, la gémissante douleur, et de ne savoir où
s’appuyer la tête. Ce que j’aime le mieux dans M. Hippolyte, c’est
qu’il est religieux, et que j’ouvrirai ses poésies comme un livre de
prières. — Voilà donc renouée une correspondance qui demeurait
oubliée. Je n’ai pas encore attaché de ruban à ses lettres, car je
mets sous un nœud de soie mes chères correspondances chacune
avec sa couleur. Celle-ci sous le noir, comme la mort qui l’a faite,
hélas ! Nous sommes des amis en deuil.

Le 7. — Une action de grâce ici, pour une grâce vivement et

continuellement demandée et obtenue aujourd’hui de Dieu. Si
j’adressais un Journal au ciel, il serait certaines fois bien rempli ;
mais ces choses-là restent dans l’âme, et j’en marque seulement le
passage là où passe ma vie avec ses événements, de quelque ordre
qu’ils soient.

Le 8. — A en croire les ingénieuses fables de l’Orient, une larme

devient perle en tombant dans la mer. Oh ! si toutes allaient là, la
mer ne roulerait que des perles. Océan de pleurs aussi plein que
l’autre, mais pas plus que l’âme parfois !

Le 9. — « Maurice aimait d’amour à venir, au crépuscule, sur un

cap désert et sous un ciel sans lune, écouter la mer refluant vers le
lointain des grèves, ou battant les bords opposés de cet Arguenon
sauvage, aux rivages duquel a, dans son adolescence, erré le génie
enveloppé encore de Chateaubriand. » — Voilà des lignes ou plutôt
des larmes venant de Bretagne encore sur cette tombe, et qui me
creusent des torrents de tristesse par les souvenirs du passé, les
regrets du présent, et cette désolante pensée répétée par tous :
qu’en d’autres temps, Maurice ne serait pas mort !…

Le 12. — Il ne serait pas mort ! Abîme de réflexions et de larmes,

où je me plonge tous les jours ! douleur sans fin de voir qu’on aurait
pu conserver ce qu’on a perdu ! Et qu’ai-je perdu ! Dieu seul le sait,
ce qu’était pour moi Maurice, mon frère, mon ami, celui dont j’avais
besoin pour ma vie, celui sur qui je répandais ma tête, mon âme,
mon cœur. Je ne m’arrête pas à ce qu’il était, à ce qu’il eût été pour
cette société qui l’a laissé mourir, si c’est vrai, comme on dit. Je n’en
sais rien, je ne connais pas le monde ; je le regardais comme un
grand homicide dans le sens religieux ; il est donc moralement
mortel, de quelque côté qu’on le considère : mortel en ce qu’il nourrit
des poisons ou qu’il laisse mourir de faim les plus nobles
intelligences.
En quel temps aurait dû naître Maurice ? Question que je me suis
faite pour sa félicité en regardant les époques. On ne voit pas à quel
siècle on pourrait, pour leur bonheur, suspendre le berceau de
certains génies. — L’intelligence est comme l’amour, toujours
accompagnée de douleur. C’est que ce n’est pas d’ici-bas, et tout ce
qui est déplacé doit souffrir. Les âmes religieuses, celles qui rentrent
en Dieu, sont les seules qui trouvent quelque apaisement dans la
vie. Les hommes n’offrent aux hommes que mauvaiseté ou
insuffisance. Je les connais peu, moi, habitante des bois, mais tant
le disent que je le crois. Je n’ai non plus trouvé de bonheur dans
personne, bonheur complet. Le plus doux, le plus plein, le meilleur a
été dans Maurice, et non sans larmes dans sa jouissance. Le
bonheur, c’est une chose environnée d’épines, de quelque côté
qu’on le touche.

Le 15. — Il est dimanche, je suis seule dans mon désert avec un

valet, le tonnerre gronde, et j’écris, sublime accompagnement d’une
pensée solitaire. Quelle impulsion ardente et élevée ! comme on
monterait, brûlerait, volerait, éclaterait en ces moments électriques !

Le 19. — Que de fois je renonce à rien écrire ici, que de fois j’y
reviens écrire ! Attrait et délaissement, ô ma vie !

[Sans date.] — Huit jours de visites, de monde, de bruit,

quelques conversations aimables, un épisode en ma solitude. C’est
la saison où l’on vient nous voir, cette fois-ci c’était en foule, des
allons à la campagne, et la campagne est envahie, le Cayla peuplé,
bruyant, gai de jeunesse, la table entourée de convives inattendus,
l’improvisé dispense de cérémonie. Mais nous n’en faisons pas, et
qui vient nous voir ne doit s’attendre qu’au gracieux accueil, le
meilleur qu’il nous soit possible dans la plus simple expression de
forme. Ainsi nos salons tout blancs, sans glace ni trace de luxe
aucun ; la salle à manger avec un buffet et des chaises, deux
fenêtres donnant sur le bois du nord ; l’autre salon à côté avec un
grand et large canapé ; au milieu une table ronde, des chaises de
paille, un vieux fauteuil en tapisserie où s’asseyait Maurice, meuble
sacré ! deux portes à vitre sur la terrasse ; cette terrasse sur un
vallon vert où coule un ruisseau, et dans le salon une belle madone
avec son enfant Jésus, don de la reine, voilà notre demeure ! assez
riante, où ceux qui viennent se plaisent, qui me plaît aussi, mais
tendue de noir, dedans, dehors : partout j’y vois un mort ou je le
cherche. Le Cayla sans Maurice !

[Sans date.] — Marie, ma sœur, m’a quittée pour quelques jours,

Marie, notre Marthe, car elle s’occupe de beaucoup de choses dans
la maison, me laissant la part du repos, la bonne sœur. Je ne
connais pas d’âme de femme plus dévouée et s’oubliant davantage.
Quand je ne l’ai pas, ma vie change au dehors, se fait active, et je
m’étonne de cette activité et de ce goût de ménage avec mes goûts
tout contraires. Naturellement je ne me plais pas en choses de
maison et gouvernement de femmes. Volontiers je le laisse à
d’autres ; mais si la charge m’en vient, je m’en acquitte de bon cœur,
sans y trouver de répugnance, sans m’ordonner comme il arrive qu’il
le faut faire du moi qui veut au moi qui ne veut pas, en tant et
souventes fois.
Ne pourrais-je mieux écrire que ces riens du tout, que ce pauvre
moi-même ? L’insignifiant passe-temps ! et qu’il tient à peu que je ne
le laisse ! Mais Maurice l’aimait, le voulait. Ce que je faisais pour lui,
je le continuerai en lui dans la pensée qu’il s’y intéresse.
 Relation de ce monde à l’autre par l’écriture et la prière, les deux
élévations de l’âme.

[Sans date.] — Songe de cette nuit, un enterrement. Je suivais

un cercueil ouvert. On ne peut rendre ce cercueil ouvert, la
douloureuse et effrayante impression de là-dedans sur l’âme. On fait
bien de voiler les morts. Quelque aimé que soit leur visage, il y a à
les voir une épouvantable douleur. Et voilà ce que nous sommes
sans âme, car c’est ce qui effraye, l’inanimé des cadavres. Quel
nom ! quelle transformation ! Jeune homme si beau ce matin, et cela
ce soir : que c’est désenchantant et propre à détourner du monde !
Je comprends ce grand d’Espagne, qui, après avoir soulevé le
suaire d’une belle reine, se jeta dans un cloître et devint un grand
saint. Plût à Dieu que la vue de la mort fût de tel effet sur tel homme
du monde. Je voudrais tous mes amis à la Trappe, en vue de leur
bonheur éternel. Non qu’on ne puisse se sauver dans le monde, et
qu’il n’y ait à remplir dans la société des devoirs aussi saints et aussi
beaux qu’en solitude, mais [33] …
[33] Inachevé.

Le 25. — Que ferai-je de ma solitude et de moi aujourd’hui ?

Comme Robinson dans son île, je suis seule avec un chien et un
berger, sorte de Vendredi presque aussi sauvage que l’autre. Avec
qui parler ? avec qui penser ? avec qui vivre la vie d’un jour ? Le
chien entend les caresses ; mais l’homme qui n’entend rien, qui, si je
lui demande un verre d’eau, ne saura ce que je veux dire lui parlant
français, ce valet des moutons, je l’envoie à ses bêtes. Maintenant
portes fermées, verrous tirés de peur des vagabonds, me voici dans
le blanc salon avec la blanche madone, ma céleste compagne, belle
et douce à voir. Je la regarde comme si c’était quelqu’un, et prête, je
crois, à me jeter à ses pieds si quelque danger survenait. Rien que
l’apparence humaine me semble une protection d’autant plus sûre
que c’est l’image de celle qui s’appelle le secours des chrétiens,
auxilium christianorum, la sainte Vierge à qui j’ai cru devoir en plus
d’une occasion des grâces spéciales, une fois dans un danger de
mort ; les autres, sans m’être personnelles, me touchent presque
autant.
On frappe à la porte ; qui sait ?
Des mendiantes. L’aumône donnée, je reviens sur mon canapé.
Le doux repos, s’il n’était un peu triste et beaucoup, entre l’isolement
et les souvenirs ! Tous les memento m’environnent, je les vois des
yeux, je les sens du cœur. Que d’ombres dans ce vieux château,
sortant de toutes les chambres ! de partout me viennent des morts :
si je pouvais en embrasser un ! Oh ! les âmes ne se laissent pas
saisir. Mon ami, mon toujours frère Maurice, comme néanmoins te
voilà changé pour moi ! Je ne prononce plus ton nom que comme
celui des reliques, j’éprouve en entrant dans ta chambre quelque
chose d’une église ; tes livres, tes habits, à peine j’ose les toucher ;
quelque chose de sacré est répandu sur toi et tout ce qui fut de toi.
La vénération suit la mort à cause sans doute de l’immortalité, de
cette vie non détruite, mais changée, que prend l’homme en Dieu, et
qui inspire un culte de religieux amour.
Jamais le dehors ne m’avait paru si grand qu’à présent. Je rentre
d’une promenade toute remplie de solitude ; rien que quelques
oiseaux en l’air, quelques poules sur les herbes.

Que mon désert est grand, que mon ciel est immense !
L’aigle, sans se lasser, n’en ferait pas le tour ;
Mille cités et plus tiendraient en ce contour ;
Et mon cœur n’y tient pas, et par delà s’élance.
Où va-t-il ? où va-t-il ? Oh ! nommez-moi le lieu !
Il s’en va sur la route à l’étoile tracée ;
Il s’en va dans l’espace où vole la pensée ;
Il s’en va près de l’ange, il s’en va près de Dieu !…

Mais c’est Saint-Louis aujourd’hui, il faut que je lise sa vie. C’est

la fête aussi de mon amie de Rayssac qui me néglige un peu, et à
qui je ne laisse pas d’offrir mon bouquet de cœur, le seul qu’on
puisse envoyer de loin. Ces fleurs-là sont immortelles.
Une lettre de Saint-Martin, du voisinage des Coques. Je ne suis
pas aussi seule que je croyais, et ma pensée a pris bien des cours
différents, véritable oiseau, se reposant néanmoins toujours sur la
même branche : Dieu et Maurice. Elle revient là quand elle a fait le
tour de toutes choses. Il n’y a en rien et nulle part de quoi me plaire
au fond, le désenchantement est au second coup d’œil. Il s’ensuit
des larmes parfois, mais un regard en haut les arrête, les console.
Je sais ce que je dois à ces élévations célestes, je sais ce que je
vois dans ces clartés surnaturelles, et alors mon âme s’apaise.

[Sans date.] — Picciola, une fleur qui fut la vie, le bonheur, le

malheur, le paradis, l’ange, le parfum, la lumière d’un pauvre
prisonnier. Ainsi un souvenir en mon cœur, prisonnier dans la vie.
Maurice est pour moi une influence à puissants effets et de nature
diverse : angoisses et joies. Les joies sont divines, celles qu’il m’a
données et celles que je crois, pensant à l’autre vie, celles que je
vois dans mon cœur, comme disait saint Louis d’un mystère. Les
félicités éternelles de l’âme de Maurice me transportent ; j’en oublie
sa mort : toute mon affection se nourrit de cette espérance. Mon
Dieu, laissez-la-moi ! Je n’ai rien de meilleur, je n’ai plus autre chose.
L’ami perdu en ce monde, on va le chercher dans l’autre ; on le
cherche dans le bonheur et je veux croire à celui de Maurice, âme
d’élite et d’élu ; ma confiance se repose sur ses faits pieux, et à la fin
sur ces paroles : Celui qui mange ma chair et qui boit mon sang a la
vie éternelle. Ce fut son dernier aliment. Donc pourquoi des
craintes ? Ne défaillons pas devant les promesses divines.
O ma pauvre Marie ! Je n’ai que ce cri à faire sur les nouvelles
arrivées du Nivernais. Mourante et vivante, inexprimable malade !
Rien n’est plus douloureux.
« … Ma vie est une espèce de crépuscule orageux dont la fin me
semble toujours bien proche. Je suis tellement agonisante que,
depuis trois semaines que je suis ici, je n’ai pu vous écrire un seul
mot. Je souffrais bien de ce silence lorsque j’aurais tant à vous dire.
Mon Dieu ! que ne pouvez-vous venir ! Vous seule pourriez me faire
résigner à vivre… »
Je partirai donc, si je puis ; j’irai partager le poids de cette vie
qu’elle ne peut porter seule. Que Dieu nous aide, car je me sens
bien faible aussi sous ce mont d’afflictions.

Le 29. — Il y a aujourd’hui de profonds regrets pour moi dans la

perte d’une paysanne, la vieille Rose Durel, qui vient de mourir.
Véritable sainte femme chrétienne dans toute la simplicité
évangélique. Sa vie était dans la foi, sa foi était l’humble croyance,
sans livres, sans rien, cette croyance antique, primitive, et que loue
ainsi l’auteur de l’Imitation : « Un humble paysan qui sert Dieu est
certainement fort au-dessus du philosophe superbe qui, se
négligeant lui-même, considère le cours des astres. » En effet, on
trouvait dans Rose une singulière distinction de vertus et de
sentiments, quelque chose au-dessus de l’éducation la plus haute :
et quand on considérait la portée d’une telle âme et le peu
d’impulsion reçue, pouvait-on s’empêcher de dire que Dieu seul
élevait ainsi ? C’est ainsi qu’en jugeait Maurice, l’appréciateur des
choses rares, le juge des âmes, l’amant du beau : il aimait Rose, la
vénérait comme une femme patriarcale. Jamais il n’est venu dans le
pays et ne s’en est allé sans la voir, sans s’asseoir à sa table ; car ici
on ne se visite pas sans manger, sans goûter le pain et le vin. Mais,
dans cette occasion, Rose ajoutait au service et relevait par quelque
chose de choix l’hospitalité d’habitude. C’était quelque beau fruit
réservé pour monsieur Maurice, des mets de son goût. Il y avait en
cela expression touchante du cœur, expression bien délicate et
naïve aussi, et dont je suis plus touchée encore, dans la
conservation d’un nid d’hirondelle que Maurice enfant avait
recommandé à son premier départ du pays. « Que je trouve ce nid
au retour. » Et il l’y retrouva, et on l’y retrouve encore religieusement
conservé au vieux plancher de la vieille chambre de Rose. O
monument !
 ENTRETIENS AVEC UNE AME.

La mort ne sépare que les corps, elle ne peut désunir les âmes.
C’est ce que je disais naguère près d’un cercueil, c’est ce que je dis
encore, car ma douleur n’a pas changé, pas plus que mes
espérances, ces espérances immortelles qui seules soutiennent
mon cœur et me rattachent au sien, trait d’union entre le ciel et la
terre, entre lui et moi. Mon ami, mon cher Maurice ! par là nous
sommes ensemble, et ma vie revient à ta vie comme autrefois, à peu
de chose près [34] .
[34] Quatre feuillets enlevés.

… A quelle heure ils sont nés du jour ou de la nuit, dans le calme

ou dans la tempête, quelle destinée les a pris, je veux dire (car je ne
donne rien au destin, divinité païenne) quel cours a eu leur vie que
Dieu nous trace et que nous remplissons ? Le malheur est-il de leur
faute ? Qu’ont-ils fait de leur intelligence ? quel emploi dans l’ordre
moral ? quel rang dans la vérité ? les peut-on compter pour le ciel, le
lieu des âmes de bien ? Mon Dieu, ne les appelez pas encore, ne les
appelez pas qu’ils ne soient tous dans la bonne voie. Que ce jour
des morts fait des frayeurs de voir mourir ! [35]
[35] Au bas de cette page, on lit ces lignes, ajoutées
plus tard et portant leur date : « Jour des morts 1842. —
Hélas ! tout meurt. Où est celui pour qui j’écrivais les
lignes précédentes, la précédente année ? où est-il ? »
 XII

Le jour de la Toussaint [1840]. — Il y a deux ans, ce même jour, à

la même heure, dans le salon indien à Paris, le frère que j’aime tant
causait intimement avec moi de sa vie, de son avenir, de son
mariage qui s’allait faire, de tant de choses venant de son cœur et
qu’il reversait dans le mien. Quel souvenir, mon Dieu ! et comme il
se lie à la triste et religieuse solennité de ce jour, la fête des saints,
la mémoire des morts et des amis disparus ! C’est pour tout cela et
pour je ne sais quoi encore que j’écris, que je reprends ce Journal
délaissé, ce mémorandum qu’il aimait, qu’il m’avait dit de lui faire,
que je veux faire en effet pour Maurice au ciel. S’il y a, comme je le
crois, des rapports entre ce monde et l’autre, si le lieu des âmes a
des affinités avec celui-ci, il s’ensuit que notre vie se lie encore à
ceux avec qui nous vivions, qu’ils participent à notre existence à la
façon divine, par amour, et qu’ils s’intéressent à ce que nous
faisons ; il me semble que Maurice me voit faire, et cela me soutient
pour faire sans lui ce que je faisais avec lui.
Journée de prières, d’élévations en haut parmi les saints, ces
bienheureux sauvés ; médité sur leur vie. Que j’aime à voir qu’ils
étaient comme nous, et ainsi que nous pouvons être comme eux !

Le jour des morts. — Que ce jour est différent des autres, à

l’église, dans l’âme, dehors, partout ! Ce qu’on sent, ce qu’on pense,
ce qu’on revoit, ce qu’on regrette ne peut se dire. Il n’y a
d’expression à tout cela que dans la prière et dans quelque écriture
intime. Je n’ai pas écrit ici, mais à quelqu’un à qui j’ai promis, tant
que je vivrai, une lettre le jour des morts, hélas !

Le 6 [novembre]. — Aujourd’hui vendredi et jour de courrier

j’attendais je ne sais quoi, mais j’attendais quelque chose. Et en effet
il m’est venu un journal de Bretagne, touchant envoi d’un ami de
Maurice. Ce n’est pas que le cœur se réjouisse de quoi que ce soit
de ce monde, mais ce qui touche à sa douleur le réveille et il se plaît
en cela. M. de La Morvonnais, en me parlant de Maurice, en
m’envoyant ce qu’il en écrit, me touche comme quelqu’un qui porte
des offrandes sur un cercueil.

Le 9. — Écrit à Louise, cette amie de jeunesse, gaie, riante et

heureuse naguère, et qui me dit : « Consolez-moi. » Personne donc
ne se passe de larmes ! Mon Dieu, consolez tous ces affligés, tous
ces cœurs douloureux qui aboutissent au mien et viennent s’y
reposer ! « Écrivez-moi, me dit-on, vos lettres me font du bien. » Eh !
quel bien ? Je ne m’en trouve aucun pour moi-même.

Le 10. — Qu’ai-je fait aujourd’hui ? Assez, si je trouvais quelque

intérêt à le dire.

Le 11. — La lune se lève là à l’horizon où j’ai si souvent regardé ;

le vent souffle à ma fenêtre comme je l’ai si souvent entendu ; je vois
ma chambrette, ma table, mes livres, mes écritures, la tapisserie et
les saintes images, tout ce que j’ai vu si souvent et que je ne verrai
plus bientôt. Je pars. Oh ! que je regrette tout ce que je laisse ici, et
surtout mon père et ma sœur et mon frère. Qui sait quand je les
reverrai ? qui sait si je les reverrai jamais ? On court tant de dangers
en voyage ! Cette route de Paris est si triste pour moi ! Il me semble
que le malheur est au bout. Lequel maintenant ? Je l’ignore, et rien
ne peut égaler celui que nous avons vu. Ce cher Maurice ! tout
m’amène à lui, et ce voyage même s’y rapporte. Mystérieuse et
sainte mission que j’accomplis en sa mémoire avec douleur et
amour.

Le 15. — A l’heure qu’il est nous partions pour l’église de

l’Abbaye-aux-Bois pour la bénédiction de leur mariage. Il y a deux
ans de cela, de ce jour toujours dans mon cœur. Mon Dieu ! Oui,
Dieu seul connaît ce qui se passe en moi à ce souvenir ; autant
j’avais mis de joie à cette époque, autant m’en vient de douleur, et
davantage. Tout se change en deuil depuis. C’est ainsi que je pars,
que je reprends en ce jour mémorable cette route de Paris. Mon
tranquille désert, mon doux Cayla, adieu ! Je regrette
inexprimablement tout ce que je laisse ici, et ma vie que j’en arrache
et qui ne saura plus prendre ailleurs. Mais une âme m’attend, une
âme que Dieu m’a donnée, un trésor à lui conserver. Allons, Dieu le
veut ! partons à ce mot comme les croisés pour la terre sainte. Le
ciel est beau, les corbeaux croassent : bon et mauvais, si les
corbeaux sont de quelques signes. Je ne le crois pas, et néanmoins,
quand on s’en va d’un endroit, on regarde à tout et on sent tout avec
les sensations communes.
Pour la dernière fois soigné mon oiseau et vu mon rosier, ce petit
rosier voyageur venu du Nivernais sur ma fenêtre. Je l’ai
recommandé à ma sœur, ainsi que mon chardonneret : à ma bonne
Marie, qui prendra soin du vase et de la cage et de tout le laissé que
j’aime. A mon père je confie une boîte de papiers, choses de cœur
qui ne sauraient être mieux que sous la garde d’un père. Il en est
d’autres qui me suivent comme d’inséparables reliques : chers écrits
de Maurice et pour lui. Ce cahier aussi, je le prends ; mais pour qui ?

Le 19. — Adieu, Toulouse, où je n’ai fait que passer, voir le

musée, la galerie des antiques, et tant de souvenirs de Maurice !
C’est à Toulouse qu’il a commencé ses études au petit séminaire.
Tous les jeunes enfants que j’ai vus en habit noir me semblaient lui.
 Le 20. — A Souillac, avec la pluie, la triste pluie. Un voyage sans
soleil, c’est une longue tristesse, c’est la vie comme elle est souvent.

Le 21. — Châteauroux, où je suis seule dans une chambre

obscure, murée à deux pieds de la fenêtre, comme la prison du
Spielberg ; comme Pellico, j’écris sur une table de bois ! Qu’est-ce
que j’écris ? Qu’écrire au bruit d’un vent étranger et dans
l’accablement de l’ennui ? En arrivant ici, en perdant de vue ces
visages connus de la diligence, je me suis jetée dans ma chambre et
sur mon lit dans un ennui désespéré. L’expression est forte peut-
être, mais quelque chose enfin qui porte à la tête et oppresse le
cœur : me trouver seule, dans un hôtel, dans une foule, est quelque
chose de si nouveau, de si étrangement triste, que je ne puis pas
m’y faire. Oh ! si c’était pour longtemps ! Mais demain je pars,
demain je serai près de mon amie, bonheur dont je n’ai pas même
envie de parler. Autrefois j’aurais tout dit. Cet autrefois est mort.
Le sommeil et un peu de temps à l’église m’ont calmée. Écrit au
Cayla, mon cher et doux endroit, où l’on pense à la voyageuse
comme je pense là.

Le 22. — Passé par Issoudun et les landes du Berry, où j’ai

pensé à George Sand qui les habite, pas loin de notre chemin. Cette
femme se rencontre souvent maintenant dans ma vie, comme tout
ce qui se lie de quelque façon à Maurice. Ce soir à Bourges, où j’ai
écrit à ma famille sur la table d’hôte. J’eusse bien voulu revoir la
cathédrale et jeter un coup d’œil à la prison de Charles V ; mais
nous sommes arrivés trop tard et je suis seule pour sortir.

Le 4 décembre, à Nevers. — Elle repose, ma chère malade, le

visage tourné vers le mur. Quand je ne la vois plus, que voir, que
regarder dans cette chambre ? Mes yeux ne se portent qu’au ciel et
sur son lit. Sous ces rideaux je vois tout ce que je puis aimer ici.