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

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.

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.

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 three months to abjure their faith or go into exile.