How to Live

by Sarah Bakewell

  As usual, when the first rumors of plague began in Bordeaux that year, anyone who could flee the city did so. Almost no one stayed out of choice, though a few officials remained at their posts. Most of those connected with the parlement left, including four out of the six jurats. Matignon wrote to the king on June 30: “The plague is spreading so in this city that there is no one having the means to live elsewhere who has not abandoned it.” That was still in the early stages. A month later, Matignon told Montaigne that “every one of the inhabitants has abandoned the city, I mean those who can bring some remedy to it; for as for the little people who have stayed, they are dying like flies.”

  Matignon apparently did stay, but Montaigne had not been in the city to begin with. He was at home when the plague began, getting ready to travel in for a handover ceremony; his mayoralty was now over, and he was about to be succeeded by Matignon himself. The first of August 1585 was his last official date, so, when Matignon’s letter was written on July 30, Montaigne had two days to go. His only task during those two days was apparently to attend the ceremony to mark the election of Matignon. Under present conditions, however, that event would be almost entirely unattended, if it took place at all.

  Montaigne now had to decide whether he should go to Bordeaux for the handover or not. His own estate was unaffected by the disease; if he went to Bordeaux now, he would be entering a plague zone purely for the sake of form. What, really, did duty require? Unsure what to do, he traveled as far as Libourne, nearer to the city but outside the danger area. From there, he wrote to the few remaining jurats in town, asking for their advice. “I will spare neither my life nor anything else,” he wrote. But he added: “I will leave you to judge whether the service I can render you by my presence at the coming election is worth my risking going into the city in view of the bad condition it is in.” Meanwhile, he would wait in the château of Feuillas, just across the river from the city. From Feuillas, he wrote again the following day, repeating his question: what did they recommend?

  The jurats’ reply, if there was one—if indeed any of them were still there—does not survive. The only certain thing is the outcome, which is that Montaigne did not go to Bordeaux. It seems that they either told him to stay away, or did not answer. Someone must have been at work in the parlement, for about this time a new order came into force: it stated that no one who was not already in the city should enter it. Had Montaigne insisted on going in, he would have been contravening this order. Evidently he cleared the matter with his conscience, and returned to his estate. By now, those two days had passed, so his mayoralty was officially over. Instead of ending with a gratifying ceremonial and speeches of thanks, it had petered out in confusion.

  No one in Montaigne’s own century seems to have commented harshly on his decision. The trouble began two hundred and seventy years later, when nineteenth-century antiquarians discovered the relevant letters in the Bordeaux City Archives, published them, and exposed Montaigne to the judgment of a very different world—a world of stark new ideas about heroism and self-sacrifice.

  The researcher responsible for the find, Arnaud Detcheverry, commented that Montaigne’s letters displayed his well-known tendency to “nonchalant Epicureanism,” and this set the tone for other critics’ comments. The early biographer Alphonse Grün thought Montaigne showed a lack of courage in remaining on the safe side of the river. In a lecture course on Grün’s book, Léon Feugère said that Montaigne “had the misfortune to forget his duty in the most serious situation.” For him, the story discredited Montaigne’s entire Essays. If the book’s author failed at such a moment, how could one trust what he said about how to live? The incident exposed the Essays’ deepest philosophical failing: their “absolute absence of decision.” Other writers agreed. The chronicler Jules Lecomte dismissed Montaigne and his entire philosophy with one word: “coward!”

  What they all seemed to find intolerable was not just a lack of personal courage—after all, Montaigne had stayed for over a week by the bed of a man dying from the plague—but his failure to fulfill his public duties. Montaigne’s cool calculations and written inquiries seemed odious to a generation whose new moral strictness still preserved the lingering whiff of Romanticism. The latter made them feel that one should be prepared to make any sacrifice, however pointless. The former made them long for Montaigne to sacrifice himself in the name of work.

  The source of the problem, just as in the seventeenth century, was a distaste for his Skepticism. Nineteenth-century readers were disturbed by it in a way few had been since Pascal. They did not mind Montaigne doubting facts, but they did not like him applying Skepticism to everyday life and showing emotional detachment from agreed standards. The Skeptic epokhe, or “I hold back,” seemed to show an untrustworthiness in his nature. It sounded very much like the greatest bugbear of the new era: nihilism.

  Nihilism, for the late nineteenth century, meant godlessness, pointlessness, and meaninglessness. It could be used as code for atheism, but it suggested something even worse: the abandonment of all moral standards. In the end, “nihilist” became almost synonymous with “terrorist.” Nihilists were people who, having no God, threw bombs and advocated the destruction of the existing social order. They were a kind of revolutionary wing to the Skeptics’ party, or Skeptics turned bad. If they took charge, nothing would be preserved and nothing could be taken for granted.

  In the face of this, it suddenly became an urgent task for his remaining defenders to prove, not just that Montaigne had acted reasonably during the plague outbreak, but that he was not a great Skeptic after all. He was, rather, a conservative moralist and a good Christian. One influential critic, Émile Faguet, devoted a series of articles to showing how negligible a role Skepticism played in the Essays. Another, Edme Champion, thought Skeptical elements could be detected, but not the kind of destructive Skepticism that “denied” or “annihilated” everything.

  The debate took on more significance because, as it happened, the Essays had just come off the Index in France. It was removed in 1854, just a year or two after the discovery of the first plague letter, though certainly not as a consequence of it. It was a long overdue decision. Despite Church condemnation, Montaigne was now canonical in France and had become the object of a new industry of literary and biographical research. The lifting of the ban raised his profile and opened the way for a larger readership, while intensifying the question of his moral acceptability.

  And for many, he became once again what he had been for Pascal and Malebranche: a trickster who was bad for the soul. Guillaume Guizot, who in 1866 called Montaigne a great “seducer,” did his best to arm readers against such seduction. Having once fallen under Montaigne’s spell himself, he now wrote to guide victims out of the web, like a deprogrammed former cultist who devotes his life to helping others escape.

  He listed the dangers in Montaigne, each of which matched up to a specific character defect. Montaigne was weak-willed. He was egotistical. He was not as much of a Christian as he claimed to be. He withdrew from public life for purely selfish reasons, in order to spend more time in contemplation—and not even religious contemplation, which might have been forgivable. When this introspection turned up faults, he did not try to correct them; he accepted himself as he was. He was godless and irresponsible. He is not the kind of writer we need: “He will not make us into the kind of men our times require.”

  The historian Jules Michelet, one of the toughest critics Montaigne ever had, thought that all this could be blamed on Montaigne’s having received too free an education, one designed to produce a merely “feeble and negative” idea of a human being, rather than a hero or a good citizen. Those plangent musical awakenings in his childhood had a lot to answer for. Michelet pictured the adult Montaigne as an invalid who isolated himself in his tower to “watch himself dream”—the inevitable consequence of a decadent, undisciplined upbringing. Over in England, the theologian Richard William Church concluded an otherwise admiring study by opining that
Montaigne had too overwhelming a sense of “the nothingness of man, of the smallness of his greatest plans and the emptiness of his greatest achievements”—all a clear indication of nihilism. This made it impossible for him to believe in “the idea of duty, the wish for good, the thought of immortality.” In general, he showed “indolence and want of moral tone.”

  A less serious moral problem also troubled Montaigne’s nineteenth-century readers: his openness about sex. (At least, it seems less serious to many of us today.) This was not completely new, but it now became central to the question of his authority as a writer. Even among earlier generations, his talk of buttocks, cracks, and tools had occasionally bothered people. Lord Halifax, the dedicatee of an English translation in the seventeenth century, remarked: “I cannot abide that, after having discoursed of the exemplary life of a holy man, he should immediately talk as he does of cuckoldom and privy-parts, and other things of this nature … I wish he had left out these things, that ladies might not be put to the blush, when his Essays are found in their libraries.” This last part seems ironic, since Montaigne had joked that the risqué parts of his final volume would get his book out of the libraries and into ladies’ boudoirs, where he would rather be.

  One solution to feminine blushes was the creation of bowdlerized editions, a popular pursuit in the nineteenth century. Abridged versions of the Essays had existed for a long time, but the usual aim had been to reorganize the material so that nuggets of wisdom could be more easily located. Now, the feeling was that Montaigne needed intervention on grounds of taste and morals too.

  A typical sanitized Essays appeared in England in 1800, recast for a female audience by an editor who called herself “Honoria.” Her Essays, Selected from Montaigne with a Sketch of the Life of the Author took the standard English translation of the day, that of Charles Cotton, and cut it down to produce the perfect Montaigne for the coming century, purged of anything distressing or confusing.

  “If, by separating the pure ore from the dross, these Essays are rendered proper for the perusal of my own sex,” writes Honoria, “I shall feel amply gratified.” The fact that, to do this, she must have pored over the “gross and indelicate allusions” herself passes unacknowledged. She also helps Montaigne with basic writing techniques. “He is also so often unconnected in his subjects, and so variable in his opinions, that his meaning cannot always be developed.” Honoria enables him to make himself clearer, and adds footnotes, sometimes to rebuke him (for not mentioning the massacres of St. Bartholomew’s Day, for example), and sometimes to warn readers not to try his more dangerous ideas at home. In particular, waking children gently by music is an “eccentric mode of education” which is “by no means here recited, as a method to be recommended.”

  Her preface creates a Montaigne who sounds intolerably earnest and worthy. “He was desirous that his philosophy should be more than speculation, as he wished to regulate not only his old age, but his whole life, according to its precepts.” She emphasizes his political conformism, and draws attention to the “many excellent religious sentiments interspersed in his Essays.” Today, this sort of thing would hardly inspire a rush to the bookshops. But Honoria was attuned to the market of the coming nineteenth century, and helped to create for it a frowning, pensive new Montaigne in a starched collar.

  Of course, a lot of nineteenth-century readers continued to love the subversive, individualistic, free-as-the-wind version of Montaigne. But the efforts of Honoria and others would increasingly make him acceptable to readers of varied kinds, all chasing Montaignes of their own invention. It made it possible to read Montaigne, not only in the boudoir, or on a Romantic mountaintop, or in the library of a man of the world, but also in a garden, on a summer’s day, where you might see a young lady of moral delicacy and innocence perusing Montaigne in bowdlerized octavo. And if she wanted to catch up on the naughty bits, she could always sneak into her father’s library later.

  MISSIONS AND ASSASSINATIONS

  Montaigne is indeed often shocking, but not always in the places where a shock might be expected. He can unsettle the reader most when he seems to be at his mildest, as when he cheerfully says, “I doubt if I can decently admit at what little cost to the repose and tranquillity of my life I have passed more than half of it amid the ruin of my country.” It takes a few moments’ thought to realize just how unusual it is for anyone to write about life in such terms, in any period of history. One might dismiss such remarks if, indeed, he had always remained passive and tranquil. But in the 1580s Montaigne would be increasingly weighed down by war-related responsibilities, which—however he downplays them in his book—surely took a toll on his peace of mind.

  The country had stayed technically at peace through his time as mayor, but by the time he retired again to his estate the Catholic Leagues were doing all they could to provoke another war. By now, the conflict was at least as much political as religious. The biggest political question was who would succeed to the French throne after Henri III. No obvious line of inheritance existed, for he had no son or suitable close relative. The monarchy was up for grabs at a moment of extreme national instability: not a good combination.

  Most Protestants, as well as a few Catholics, favored Henri of Navarre, the Protestant prince from Béarn who had so much influence in the Bordeaux area and who was technically first in the royal line—but whom many thought should be disqualified by his religion. His main rival was his uncle, Charles, cardinal de Bourbon, whose claim was supported by the Leaguists and their powerful leader Henri, duc de Guise. Meanwhile, the king himself was still very much alive, and seemingly uncertain about which successor to endorse. The next stage of the war would become known as the War of the Three Henris, because it revolved around the three-cornered, crazily spinning pinwheel of Henri III, Henri of Navarre, and Henri of Guise.

  Politiques, including Montaigne, were committed on principle to supporting the present king whatever he did. But, as a successor, most preferred Navarre, a choice which earned them extra hatred from the Leagues. Catholic extremists thought you might as well put the Devil himself on the throne as have a Protestant king.

  As mayor, Montaigne had made attempts to broker an understanding between the two parties. Both politically, as mayor of a Catholic city near Navarre’s territory, and personally, as a good diplomat, he was well placed to do this. He met and entertained Navarre from time to time, and made friends with his influential mistress Diane d’Andouins, or “Corisande.” In December 1584, Navarre stayed for a few days on Montaigne’s estate, at a moment when the king himself was trying to persuade him to abjure Protestantism so as to inherit the throne. Navarre refused. It thus seemed that one of the few avenues of hope for France might be to persuade Navarre to reconsider this refusal—so Montaigne tried to do just that.

  (illustration credit i15.1)

  On a personal level, the visit was successful. Navarre trusted his host enough to rely on Montaigne’s servants rather than his own, and to eat without having the food tested for poison in the usual way. Montaigne recorded all this in his Beuther diary:

  December 19, 1584. The king of Navarre came to see me at Montaigne, where he had never been, and was here for two days, served by my men without any of his officers. He would have neither tasting nor covered dishes, and slept in my bed.

  It was a great responsibility, and guests of this caliber expected to be royally entertained, too. Montaigne organized a hunting trip: “I had a stag started in the forest, which led him a chase for two days.” The entertainments went well (though probably not from the stag’s point of view), but the diplomatic project did not. A letter from Montaigne to Matignon a month later shows that he was still working on the same task. Meanwhile, Henri III came under pressure from the Leaguists—now very powerful, especially in Paris—to introduce anti-Protestant legislation that would cut Navarre off from the throne altogether. Feeling he had no support in his own city, Henri III gave in to them, and, in October 1585, issued an edict giving Huguenots thre
e months to abjure their faith or go into exile.

  If this was an attempt to avoid war, it had the opposite effect. Navarre called on his followers to rise up and resist this new oppression. Henri III passed further anti-Protestant laws the following spring, alienating Navarre further. The king’s mother Catherine de’ Medici traveled around the country trying, like Montaigne, to engineer a last-minute agreement with Navarre, but she failed too. At last, open war broke out.

  This would be the last of the wars, but also by far the longest and worst of them. It lasted until 1598, which meant that Montaigne would never see peace again, since he lived only to 1592. More than ever, in this “trouble,” the worst suffering was caused on a local, chaotic level, by lawless bands of soldiers and gangs of starving refugees roaming the countryside, as well as by famine and plague.

  Montaigne was in a dangerous position, threatened not only by the anarchy in the countryside but by his old Bordeaux enemies. He seemed to have too many Protestant friends for a good Catholic; he was known for having entertained Navarre, and he had a brother fighting in Navarre’s forces. As he put it, he was a Guelph to the Ghibellines and a Ghibelline to the Guelphs—an allusion to the two factions that had divided Italy for centuries. “There were no formal accusations, for there was nothing they could sink their teeth into,” he wrote, but “mute suspicions” always hung in the air. Yet he continued to leave his property undefended, sticking to his principle of openness. In July 1586, a Leaguist army of twenty thousand men laid siege to Castillon on the Dordogne, about five miles away; the fighting spread over the borders of Montaigne’s estate. Some of the army camped on his land. The soldiers pillaged his crops and robbed his tenants.

  At this time, Montaigne had been trying to get back to work on his book, beginning a third volume and inserting additions into existing chapters. It was right in the midst of this that, as he wrote, “a mighty load of our disturbances settled down for several months with all its weight right on me. I had on the one hand the enemy at my door, on the other hand the free-booters, worse enemies … and I was sampling every kind of military mischief all at once.” In late August, plague broke out among the besieging army. It spread to the local population, and infected Montaigne’s estate.