Sarah Bakewell - How to Live - A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Montaigne was fascinated by differences in eating habits — always an obvious point of cultural comparison for any traveler. In Switzerland, goblets were refilled with wine from a distance using a long-beaked vessel, and, after the meat course, everyone tossed their plates into a basket in the middle of the table. People ate with knives, “hardly ever put their hands into the dish,” and had minuscule napkins only six inches square, despite their liking for messy sauces and soups. More strangeness awaited in Swiss bedrooms: “Their beds are raised so high that commonly you climb into them by steps; and almost everywhere they have little beds under the big ones.”

Everything engaged Montaigne’s attention, or that of his secretary, who was writing at his direction. At an inn in Lindau, a cage full of birds ran along one entire wall of the dining room, with alleyways and brass wires so that the birds could hop from one end of the room to the other. In Augsburg, they met a group taking two ostriches on leashes as presents to the duke of Saxony. Montaigne also noticed, in that city, that “they dust their glassware with a hair-duster attached to the end of a stick.” And he was intrigued by the city’s multiple remote-controlled gates, which closed off chambers in turn like locks in a canal, so that aggressors could not force their way through.

Everywhere they went, they visited fashionable fountains and water gardens, good for hours of sadistic entertainment. In the gardens of the Fugger family in Germany, a wooden walkway leading between two fishponds concealed brass jets primed to spray unsuspecting ladies and gentlemen as they passed. Elsewhere in the same garden, you could press a button to shoot a spout of water into the face of anyone who looked at a particular fountain. A Latin sign in the garden read, “You were looking for trifling amusements; here they are; enjoy them.” Apparently Montaigne’s party did.

Great art seemed to impress Montaigne less, or at least he says little about it, only occasionally commenting on such works as the “very beautiful and excellent statues by Michelangelo” in Florence. The Essays also contain little about visual art. He filled his tower with frescos, so must have had some taste for pictures, yet he seems to have had little desire to write about them — although the paint was barely dry on so much Renaissance art throughout Italy.

This omission was held against him by some later readers of the journal, especially the Romantics, who became its first audience, for the manuscript turned up in a trunk at the château only in 1772. Readers fell on the discovery with excitement, but emerged disappointed with what they found there. Along with a better appreciation of art, eighteenth-century readers would have liked sublime gushings about the beauty of the Alps, and melancholy meditations on the ruins of Rome. Instead, they got a record of Montaigne’s urinary blockages interspersed with closely observed, piquant, but non-sublime details about the inns, food, technology, manners, and social practices at each stop. People were less than enthralled to learn, from the secretary, that “the water that Monsieur de Montaigne drank on Tuesday caused him three stools,” and that two days later another dose of spa water was effective “both in front and behind.” They were no happier when Montaigne himself took over the diary-writing and told them that he had voided a stone “as big and long as a pine nut, but as thick as a bean at one end, and having, to tell the truth, exactly the shape of a prick.” The only thing which Swiss and German readers, at least, could enjoy was the fact that the journal was also full of compliments about their lands, especially the well-designed stoves of the Swiss.

The muted response to the work by its first audience seems to have set the tone for its reception ever since; it has always been regarded as a poor cousin to the Essays . Yet it makes for a better read than any number of overblown Romantic travelogues, precisely because it remains so tied to detail. It has little beds under big beds, messy Swiss sauces, room-sized birdcages, circumcisions, sex changes, and ostriches: what’s not to like?

Another appealing feature of the journal is that it allows the secretary to give us a portrait of Montaigne from the outside — a portrait which turns out to be remarkably consistent with the self-reflective Montaigne of the Essays . The reader sees Montaigne exerting himself to shake off all national prejudices, just as one might expect him to. He seems enthusiastic and full of curiosity, but sometimes also selfish, dragging his grumbling entourage off to places they could see no point in visiting. There is even the odd hint that he waffled too much in formal orations, despite (or perhaps because of) his lack of interest in them. In Basel, after Montaigne was subjected to “a long welcoming speech” at dinner, the secretary writes that he gave an equally “long reply.” And in Schaffhausen, Montaigne was presented with a gift of wine—“not without several ceremonious speeches on both sides.”

There were fewer demands on Montaigne’s oratorical powers once they reached Italy, which they did on October 28, 1580. Yet, the closer they came to it, the more he questioned how much he really wanted to go there. This was the great destination, the center of European culture; Venice and Rome had called to him all his life. But he now discovered that he preferred less well known places. Had Montaigne had his way, remarked the secretary as they reached the Alps, he might have turned towards Poland or Greece instead, perhaps just to prolong the whole trip. But he met with opposition, and so agreed to follow the Italy route like everyone else. He soon recovered. “I never saw him less tired or complaining less of his pains,” wrote the secretary now, “for his mind was so intent on what he encountered, both on the road and at his lodgings, and he was so eager on all occasions to talk to strangers, that I think this took his mind off his ailment.”

Venice, one of their first major Italian stops, confirmed his fears about overpopular tourist destinations. As the secretary put it, he found it slightly less wonderful than people said it would be. Still, he explored it with no lack of zest, hiring a gondola and meeting all the interesting people he could find, and he was won over by Venice’s bizarre geography, its cosmopolitan population, and its government as an independent republic. It seemed to have some special political magic that other places lacked, engaging in conflicts only when it had something to gain, and maintaining a just government within its own boundaries. Montaigne was also impressed by the way the city’s courtesans lived in dignity and luxury, openly maintained by noblemen and respected by all. He met one of the most famous, Veronica Franco, who had recently survived trial at the hands of the Inquisition and had published a book of correspondence, the Lettere familiari e diversi , which she personally presented to Montaigne.

After Venice, they traveled through Ferrara, where Montaigne met Tasso, then Bologna, where they watched a fencing demonstration, and Florence, where they visited trick gardens with seats that squirted water at your bottom when you sat down. In another garden, the party “had the very amusing experience” of being squirted with water from “an infinite number of tiny holes,” so as to form a shower so fine it was almost a mist.

They carried on, getting ever closer to Rome. On the last day before reaching the city, November 3, 1580, Montaigne was so excited that, for once, he made everyone get up three hours before dawn to travel the last few miles. The road through the outskirts was not promising, all humps and clefts and potholes, but as they went on they glimpsed the first few ruins, and, at last, the great city itself.