It sounds so simple, put like this, but nothing is harder to do. This is why Zen masters spend a lifetime, or several lifetimes, learning it. Even then, according to traditional stories, they often manage it only after their teacher hits them with a big stick-the keisaku keisaku, used to remind meditators to pay full attention. Montaigne managed it after one fairly short lifetime, partly because he spent so much of that lifetime scribbling on paper with a very small stick.

In writing about his experience as if he were a river, he started a literary tradition of close inward observation that is now so familiar that it is hard to remember that it is is a tradition. Life just seems to be like that, and observing the play of inner states is the writer's job. Yet this was not a common notion before Montaigne, and his peculiarly restless, free-form way of doing it was entirely unknown. In inventing it, and thus attempting a second answer to the question of how to live-"pay attention"-Montaigne escaped his crisis and even turned that crisis to his advantage. a tradition. Life just seems to be like that, and observing the play of inner states is the writer's job. Yet this was not a common notion before Montaigne, and his peculiarly restless, free-form way of doing it was entirely unknown. In inventing it, and thus attempting a second answer to the question of how to live-"pay attention"-Montaigne escaped his crisis and even turned that crisis to his advantage.

Both "Don't worry about death" and "Pay attention" were answers to a midlife loss of direction: they emerged from the experience of a man who had lived long enough to make errors and false starts. Yet they also marked a beginning, bringing about the birth of his new essay-writing self.

3. Q. How to live? A. Be born

MICHEAU.

MONTAIGNE'S ORIGINAL SELF, the one that did not write essays but merely moved and breathed like everyone else, had a simpler start. He came into this world on February 28, 1533-the same year as the future Queen Elizabeth I of England. His birth took place between eleven o'clock and noon, in the family chateau, which would be his lifelong home. He was named Michel, but, to his father at least, he would always be known as Micheau. This nickname appears even in doc.u.ments as formal as his father's will, after the boy had turned into a man.

In the Essays Essays, Montaigne wrote that he had been carried in his mother's womb for eleven months. This was an odd claim, since it was well known that such a prodigy of nature was barely possible. Mischievous minds would surely have leaped to indelicate conclusions. In Rabelais's Gargantua Gargantua, the eponymous giant also spends eleven months in his mother's womb. "Does this sound strange?" Rabelais asks, and answers himself with a series of tongue-in-cheek case studies in which lawyers were clever enough to prove the legitimacy even of a child whose supposed father had died died eleven months before its birth. "Thanks to these learned laws, our virtuous widows may, for two months after their husbands' demise, freely indulge in games of grip-crupper with a pig in the poke, heels over head and to their hearts' content." Montaigne had read Rabelais, and must have thought of the obvious jokes, but he seemed unconcerned. eleven months before its birth. "Thanks to these learned laws, our virtuous widows may, for two months after their husbands' demise, freely indulge in games of grip-crupper with a pig in the poke, heels over head and to their hearts' content." Montaigne had read Rabelais, and must have thought of the obvious jokes, but he seemed unconcerned.

No paternity doubts emerge elsewhere in the Essays Essays. Montaigne even muses on the power of inheritance in his family, describing traits that had come down to himself through his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, including an easygoing honesty and a propensity to kidney stones. He seems to have considered himself very much his father's son.

Montaigne was happy to talk about honesty and hereditary ailments, but was more discreet about other aspects of his heritage, for he came not from ancient aristocracy but, on both sides, from several generations of upwardly mobile merchants. He even made out that the Montaigne estate was the place where "most" of his ancestors were born, a blatant fudge: his own father was the first to be born there.

The property itself had been in the family for longer, it was true. Montaigne's great-grandfather Ramon Eyquem bought it in 1477, towards the end of a long, successful money-making life dealing in wine, fish, and woad-the plant from which blue dye is extracted, an important local product. Ramon's son Grimon did little to the estate other than adding an oak- and cedar-lined path to the nearby church. But he built up the Eyquem wealth even further, and started another family tradition by getting involved in Bordeaux politics. At some point he gave up trade and began living "n.o.bly," an important step. Being n.o.ble was not a je ne sais quoi je ne sais quoi of cla.s.s and style; it was a technical matter, and the main rule was that you and your descendants must engage in no trade and pay no taxes for at least three generations. Grimon's son Pierre also avoided trade, so n.o.ble status fell, for the first time, on generation number three: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne himself. By that time, ironically, his father Pierre had turned the estate from a tract of land into a successful commercial concern. The chateau became the head office of a fairly large wine-producing business, yielding tens of thousands of liters of wine per year. It still produces wine today. This was allowed: you could make as much money as you liked selling the products of your own land, without its being considered trade. of cla.s.s and style; it was a technical matter, and the main rule was that you and your descendants must engage in no trade and pay no taxes for at least three generations. Grimon's son Pierre also avoided trade, so n.o.ble status fell, for the first time, on generation number three: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne himself. By that time, ironically, his father Pierre had turned the estate from a tract of land into a successful commercial concern. The chateau became the head office of a fairly large wine-producing business, yielding tens of thousands of liters of wine per year. It still produces wine today. This was allowed: you could make as much money as you liked selling the products of your own land, without its being considered trade.

[image]

(ill.u.s.tration credit i3.1)

The Eyquem story exemplifies the degree of mobility then possible, at least towards the upper end of the social scale. New n.o.bles sometimes found it hard to gain full respect, but this mainly applied to the so-called "n.o.bility of the robe," who were elevated for contributions to political and civil service, not to the "n.o.bility of the sword," who gained their status from property, as Montaigne's family did, and prided themselves on the military calling that was expected to come with it. Peasants, meanwhile, mostly stayed where they had always been: on the bottom. Their lives were still dominated by the local seigneur seigneur-in this case, the head of the Eyquem family. He owned their homes, employed them, and rented out the use of his wine press and bread oven. When Montaigne's turn came along, he probably remained a typical seigneur seigneur from their point of view, however much he praised the peasants' wisdom in the from their point of view, however much he praised the peasants' wisdom in the Essays Essays-a book no agricultural worker on his estate was ever likely to read.

The entry on Montaigne's birth in the family book states that he was born "in confiniis Burdigalensium et Petragorensium": "in confiniis Burdigalensium et Petragorensium": on the borders between Bordeaux and Perigord. This was significant, for Bordeaux was mostly Catholic, while Perigord was dominated by supporters of the new religion, the Reformist or Protestant one. The Eyquem family had to keep its peace with both sides of a divergence that would split Europe in two throughout Montaigne's life, and far beyond it. on the borders between Bordeaux and Perigord. This was significant, for Bordeaux was mostly Catholic, while Perigord was dominated by supporters of the new religion, the Reformist or Protestant one. The Eyquem family had to keep its peace with both sides of a divergence that would split Europe in two throughout Montaigne's life, and far beyond it.

The Reformation was still very recent news: its inception is generally dated to 1517, the year in which Martin Luther wrote a treatise attacking the Catholic tradition of selling fast-track earthly pardons or "indulgences," and reportedly nailed it to the church door in Wittenberg by way of a challenge. Widely circulated, the treatise set off a major rebellion against the Church. The Pope responded first by dismissing Luther as a "drunken German," then by excommunicating him. The secular powers of the Holy Roman Empire p.r.o.nounced Luther an outlaw who could be killed on sight, thus making him a popular hero. Eventually most of Europe would fall into two camps: those who kept loyal to the Church, and those who backed Luther's rebellion. There was never anything geographically or ideologically neat about this division. Europe fell apart like a crumbling loaf, not like an apple halved by a knife. Almost every country was affected, but few went decisively one way or the other. In many places, especially France, the fault lines ran through villages and even families, rather than between separate territories.

Montaigne's region of Guyenne (also known as Aquitaine) did show a pattern: roughly, the countryside went one way and the capital city went the other. Tensions were heightened by the general feeling, already widespread in the area before the Reformation, that Aquitaine did not form part of France. It had its own language, and few historical connections with the north of the country. For a long time, it had been English territory. The English were driven out only in 1451, by French invaders who were seen as alien and untrustworthy raptors. People harked back to the old era with nostalgia, not because they really missed the English, but because they so hated the northern French. Rebellions were frequent. The authorities built three heavy fortresses to keep the city under watch: the Chateau Trompette, the Fort du Ha, and Fort Louis. All were hated; all are gone today.

Where possible, Bordeaux formed diplomatic links with anyone other than its conquerors. In Montaigne's time the area was much influenced by the Protestant court of Navarre, based in Bearn in the Spanish border country to the south. It also kept up ties with England, which developed a taste for Bordeaux wine. An English wine fleet called there regularly to top up supplies-good news for local suppliers, not least the Eyquem family of Montaigne.

As the estate grew in importance, so "Montaigne" came to overshadow the older Eyquem name. The latter had, and has, a distinctive regional sound. One branch of the family is still remembered for its legendary wine estate: the Chateau d'Yquem. Despite a preference for locality and particularity in most things, Montaigne became the first to sideline this and to be known by the more generic French name of his home. Biographers have been harsh on him for this decision, but he was only extending a move his father had already made by styling himself "de Montaigne" when he signed doc.u.ments. Whereas his father dropped this extra part if he wanted to be brief, Montaigne tended to leave out the "Eyquem."

If Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, product of a meteoric social rise, hastened over his father's mercantile background in the Essays Essays, it could have been to ensure that his book appealed to the right sort of n.o.ble, leisured market; it could also be that he simply gave it little thought. His father probably avoided regaling him with stories about their origins; Montaigne may have grown up barely aware of them. No doubt vanity came into it too: it was one of the many petty weaknesses Montaigne cheerfully acknowledged, adding: If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in it, one as much as another; but those who are aware of it are a little better off-though I don't know.

That final coda-"though I don't know"-is pure Montaigne. One must imagine it appended, in spirit, to almost everything he ever wrote. His whole philosophy is captured in this paragraph. Yes, he says, we are foolish, but we cannot be any other way so we may as well relax and live with it.

If his father's background was murky, a more significant secret apparently lurked in the family of his mother, Antoinette de Louppes de Villeneuve. Her ancestors were merchants; they were also immigrants from Spain, which, in the context of the time, strongly suggests that they were Jewish refugees. Like many others, they converted to Christianity under duress, and left following the persecution of Jews on the peninsula in the late fifteenth century.

Montaigne may not have realized that he was of Jewish origin, if indeed he was. He showed no more than mild interest in the subject, mentioning Jews only occasionally in the Essays Essays, usually either neutrally or with sympathy, but never in a way that suggested he felt personally involved. Traveling in Italy later in life, he visited synagogues and witnessed a circ.u.mcision, but he did all this with the same curiosity he showed for everything else he came across: Protestant church services, executions, brothels, trick fountains, rock gardens, and unusual furniture.

He also expressed a wry skepticism about the "conversions" of some recent refugees-reasonably enough, since the act was not done by choice. If, as some have speculated, this was meant as a subtle dig at his mother's family, it would not be surprising. In his political life, he suffered constant difficulties from some of her relatives in Bordeaux. He even seems to have had trouble getting on with Antoinette herself.

Montaigne's mother was undoubtedly a strong character, but convention kept her powerless and frustrated. She married young, as women usually did, and probably had little choice in the matter. Pierre Eyquem was considerably older than her: in the marriage doc.u.ment, of January 15, 1529, he is described as thirty-three, while she is only "of age." This could mean anything between twelve and twenty-five; since she managed to have the last of her children over thirty years after the wedding, she must have been at the young end of this range. Two babies were born before Michel, though neither survived. She was very likely still a teenager when he came along, yet by then she had been married for four years.

If there was anything childish or demure about her as a bride, that soon vanished. Legal doc.u.ments surviving from various periods of her life create a picture of someone fierce, opinionated, and very able. Her husband's first will, of 1561, left the task of managing the household to her rather than to his eldest son, though he later changed this. In 1561, Pierre Eyquem either lacked faith in Micheau (nearly twenty-eight at the time) or had an exceptionally high opinion of his wife-which would be impressive in an era when women were barely considered capable of rational thought.

The second will, of September 22, 1567, showed more trust in his son, but by now Pierre seemed to feel the need to use the doc.u.ment to command his wife to love her children, and to tell them to respect and honor her. He apparently feared that she and her eldest son would not live together amicably, for he ordered Montaigne to find accommodation for her elsewhere if living at the family estate did not work out. Antoinette did stay with him and his family for a long time after her husband's death-until about 1587-but not very convivially. Another legal doc.u.ment drawn up between mother and son on August 31, 1568, a.s.serted Antoinette's right to receive "all filial honor, respect, and service," as well as servants to attend her and a hundred livres tournois livres tournois a year for petty cash. She, in turn, had to acknowledge his "command and mastery" of the chateau and estate. The contract implies that Antoinette felt poorly looked after, while Montaigne wanted to stop her meddling. a year for petty cash. She, in turn, had to acknowledge his "command and mastery" of the chateau and estate. The contract implies that Antoinette felt poorly looked after, while Montaigne wanted to stop her meddling.

Things got worse. Antoinette's own will, written on April 19, 1597-five years after her son's death, for she outlived him-stated that she did not wish to be buried on the estate, and virtually cut Montaigne's one child Leonor out of the inheritance. She complained that her original dowry should have gone on buying more property, yet did not, and she added: "I worked for a period of forty years in the house of Montaigne with my husband in such a way that by my work, care, and management the said house has been greatly increased in value, improved, and enlarged." Her son Montaigne enjoyed the benefit of this throughout his life, as did Leonor, who thus became quite "rich and opulent" enough and needed nothing more. Finally, Antoinette remarked that she knew herself to be "of an age easy to circ.u.mvent"; she was probably around eighty. It seems that she feared a challenge to the will on grounds of senility.

Reading the frequent confessions of indolence and inept.i.tude that fill Montaigne's book, it is easy to see why Antoinette thought the estate was neglected during the time he was in charge of it. He found practical affairs a bore and avoided them as much as possible. It is more surprising that she should make the same complaint against her husband Pierre, for he does not come across in the Essays Essays that way at all. Montaigne makes his father sound like a dynamo of a man, devoted to his duties and always at work on home improvements-restless and interventionist to a fault. that way at all. Montaigne makes his father sound like a dynamo of a man, devoted to his duties and always at work on home improvements-restless and interventionist to a fault.

Pierre Eyquem de Montaigne was a fifteenth-century man, just-he was born on September 29, 1495. Everything about him proclaimed his remoteness from his son's world. Following n.o.ble tradition, he took up the profession of war, being the first in his family to do so. Michel did not follow him in this. As a n.o.bleman he was obliged to carry a sword, but there is no indication in the Essays Essays that he unsheathed it very often. One contemporary, Brantome, described Montaigne as "dragging" the sword around town and suggested that he confine himself to carrying a pen. No such aspersions could have been cast on Pierre, who rushed off at the first opportunity to join France's wars in Italy. that he unsheathed it very often. One contemporary, Brantome, described Montaigne as "dragging" the sword around town and suggested that he confine himself to carrying a pen. No such aspersions could have been cast on Pierre, who rushed off at the first opportunity to join France's wars in Italy.

French forces had been regularly attacking and conquering states on the peninsula since 1494, and would continue doing so until 1559, when the Peace of Cateau Cambresis stopped France's foreign invasions and thus opened the way to its real sixteenth-century catastrophe: the civil wars. The Italian adventures were less damaging, but they were expensive and mostly pointless, as well as traumatic for those involved. Pierre plunged into battle some time around 1518. Apart from a brief interlude the year after that, he remained away from home until early 1529, when he came back to get married.

Sixteenth-century warfare was a messy business, a matter less of battlefield glamour than of hypothermia, fever, hunger, disease, and infected sword cuts and gunshot wounds for which there was little effective treatment. Above all, there were sieges, in which civilians and soldiers alike were starved into surrender. Pierre may have been involved in sieges of Milan and Pavia in 1522, and perhaps also in a disastrous siege of Pavia in 1525, which ended with French soldiers being slaughtered in large numbers and the French king being taken prisoner. In later life Pierre would regale his family with hair-raising stories of his war experiences, including accounts of whole villages of starving people committing suicide en ma.s.se en ma.s.se for lack of a better way out. If Montaigne grew up to prefer dragging a pen to a sword, perhaps this was why. for lack of a better way out. If Montaigne grew up to prefer dragging a pen to a sword, perhaps this was why.

The Italian wars may have been unedifying in one way, but in the literal sense of offering an education, they were highly improving for the French. Between sieges, Frenchmen encountered exciting ideas about science, politics, philosophy, pedagogy, and fashionable manners. The high Italian Renaissance had petered out by now, but Italy was still by far the most advanced civilization in Europe. French soldiers learned new ways of thinking about almost everything, and when they came home they brought their discoveries with them. Pierre was certainly one of this breed of Italianized Frenchmen, influenced by their travels and by their own charismatic, modernizing king Francois I. Later kings gave up on Francois's Renaissance ideal, and during the civil wars almost everyone lost faith in the future altogether-but in Pierre's youth that disillusionment was a long way off. The ideals were still new enough to be exciting.

[image]

(ill.u.s.tration credit i3.2)

Except, perhaps, for having a more soldierly bearing than his son, Pierre was physically of the same stamp. Montaigne describes him as "a small man, full of vigor, and straight and well-proportioned in stature," with "an attractive face, inclining to brown." He was fit, and kept himself that way. He liked to exercise his biceps using canes filled with lead, and he wore shoes with leaded soles to train him for running and jumping. The latter was a particular talent. "Of his vaulting, he has left some small miracles in people's memory," wrote Montaigne. "I have seen him, past sixty, put our agility to shame: leap into the saddle in his furred gown, do a turn over the table on his thumb, hardly ever go up to his room without taking three or four steps at a time."

This Father William figure had other fine qualities, all more characteristic of his generation than of Montaigne's. He was serious; he took care over the neatness of his appearance and dress, and showed "conscientiousness and scrupulousness" in all things. His sporting talents and gallant manners made him popular with women: Montaigne describes him as "very well suited to the service of the ladies, both by nature and by art." It was probably to amuse female company that he sprang over tables. As for real s.e.xual escapades, Pierre gave his son inconsistent messages. On the one hand, he related stories "of remarkable intimacies, especially of his own, with respectable women, free from any suspicion." On the other, "he solemnly swore that he had come to his marriage a virgin." Montaigne seemed unconvinced by the virginity claim, noting only, "and yet he had taken a very long part in the Italian wars."

After his return from Italy and his marriage, Pierre began a political career in Bordeaux. He was elected jurat and provost in 1530, then deputy mayor in 1537, and finally mayor in 1554. This period saw difficult times in the city: a new local tax on salt in 1548 inspired riots, which "France" punished by stripping Bordeaux of many legal rights. As mayor, Pierre did what he could to restore its fortunes, but the privileges came back slowly. The stress damaged his health. Just as his tales of war atrocities may have put Montaigne off the military life, so the sight of Pierre's exhaustion encouraged him to keep more distance from the job when he too became mayor of Bordeaux some thirty years later.

Pierre had some brilliant ideas, including one for a sort of sixteenth-century eBay: he proposed that each town should set up a place where anyone could advertise what they wanted: "I want to sell some pearls; I want to buy some pearls. So-and-so wants company to go to Paris; so-and-so is looking for a servant with such-and-such qualifications; so-and-so wants a master; so-and-so a workman; one man this, another man that." It sounds sensible, but for some reason nothing came of the plan.

Another good idea of Pierre's was keeping a journal in which he recorded everything that happened on the estate: the comings and goings of servants, and financial and agricultural data of all kinds. He encouraged his son to do the same. Montaigne started, in a fit of good intentions after Pierre's death, but did not keep it up: only one fragment survives. "I think I am a fool to have neglected it," he wrote in the Essays Essays. He did manage to maintain another record begun by his father, using a printed calendar called the Ephemeris Ephemeris, by the German writer Michel Beuther. This survives almost in full, minus a few leaves, and is filled with notes by Montaigne and others in his family. Each date in the year has its own page, combining a printed summary of events from history with a blank area for adding remarks year by year. Montaigne used his Beuther to record births, travels, and notable visits over his lifetime. He kept it quite faithfully, but with a tendency to get dates, ages, and other such precise information wrong.

His wife's complaints notwithstanding, Pierre apparently adored hard work of all kinds, none more so than developing the estate. Perhaps what irritated her was his preference for spending on improvements rather than on buying new property, together with the habit of starting more things than he finished. Pierre's abandonment of the trading-post idea may have been more in character than it seems. On Pierre's death, Montaigne inherited a lot of half-completed jobs on the estate, which he always felt he should see through, but never did. Work left at the building-site stage is very annoying; perhaps inaction was Montaigne's way of dealing with it, just as overt exasperation was Antoinette's.

Some of the abandoned work may have been a sign that Pierre's energies were in decline, for, from the age of sixty-six, he suffered regular debilitating attacks of kidney stones. Montaigne often saw his father doubled over in agony during the last few years of his life. He never forgot the shock of witnessing the first attack, which struck Pierre without warning and knocked him unconscious from sheer pain. He fell into his son's arms as he pa.s.sed out. It was probably a similar episode, or complications ensuing from one, that finally killed him. He died on June 18, 1568, at the age of seventy-four.

By this time, Pierre had replaced his first will, so implicitly critical of his son's abilities, with a new one which gave Montaigne the task of looking after his younger brothers and sisters and serving them as a replacement father. "He must take my place and represent me to them," was how he put it. Montaigne did take his father's place, and he did not always find it an easy one to occupy.

In the Essays Essays, he comes across as a kind of negative image of Pierre. Praise for his father is often followed by an a.s.sertion that he himself is completely different. Having described how Pierre loved to build up the estate, Montaigne gives us an almost comically exaggerated picture of his own lack of either skill or interest in such work. Whatever he has done, "completing some old bit of wall and repairing some badly constructed building," has been in honor of Pierre's memory rather than for his own satisfaction, he says. As the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would warn, "One should not try to surpa.s.s one's father in diligence; that makes one sick." On the whole Montaigne did not not try, and thus he kept himself sane. try, and thus he kept himself sane.

Inadequate as he felt himself to be in the practical skills of life, he knew the advantage he had when it came to literature and learning. Pierre's knowledge of books was as limited as his love of them was boundless. Typically for his generation, in Montaigne's view, he made books the object of a cult and went to great lengths to seek out their authors, "receiving them at his house like holy persons" and "collecting their sayings and discourses like oracles." Yet he showed little critical understanding. All right, so Pierre could bounce over the table on one manly thumb, Montaigne seems to say, but in matters of the intellect he was an embarra.s.sment. He worshiped books without understanding them. His son would always try to do the opposite.

Montaigne was right in thinking this characteristic of Pierre's contemporaries. French n.o.bles of the early 1500s loved everything clever and Italianate; they distanced themselves from their own predecessors' defiantly cra.s.s att.i.tude to scholarship. What Montaigne neglected to observe was that he himself was just as typical of his his era in rejecting the book-learning fetish. The fathers filled their sons with literature and history, trained them in critical thinking, and taught them to bandy around cla.s.sical philosophies like juggling b.a.l.l.s. By way of thanks, the sons dismissed it all as valueless and adopted a superior att.i.tude. Some even tried to revive the older anti-scholarly tradition, as if it were a radical departure never thought of before. era in rejecting the book-learning fetish. The fathers filled their sons with literature and history, trained them in critical thinking, and taught them to bandy around cla.s.sical philosophies like juggling b.a.l.l.s. By way of thanks, the sons dismissed it all as valueless and adopted a superior att.i.tude. Some even tried to revive the older anti-scholarly tradition, as if it were a radical departure never thought of before.

There was a tiredness and a sourness in Montaigne's generation, along with a rebellious new form of creativity. If they were cynical, it is easy to see why: they had to watch the ideals that had guided their upbringing turn into a grim joke. The Reformation, hailed by some earlier thinkers as a blast of fresh air beneficial even to the Church itself, became a war and threatened to ruin civilized society. Renaissance principles of beauty, poise, clarity, and intelligence dissolved into violence, cruelty, and extremist theology. Montaigne's half-century was so disastrous for France that it took another another half-century to recover from it-and in some ways recovery never came, for the turmoil of the late 1500s stopped France from building a major New World empire like those of England and Spain, and kept it inward-looking. By the time of Montaigne's death, France was economically feeble, and ravaged by disease, famine, and public disorder. No wonder young n.o.bles of his generation ended up as exquisitely educated misanthropes. half-century to recover from it-and in some ways recovery never came, for the turmoil of the late 1500s stopped France from building a major New World empire like those of England and Spain, and kept it inward-looking. By the time of Montaigne's death, France was economically feeble, and ravaged by disease, famine, and public disorder. No wonder young n.o.bles of his generation ended up as exquisitely educated misanthropes.

Montaigne had some of this anti-intellectual streak in him. He grew up to feel that the only hope for humanity lay in the simplicity and ignorance of the peasantry. They were the true philosophers of the modern world, the heirs to cla.s.sical sages such as Seneca and Socrates. Only they knew how to live, precisely because they knew nothing much about anything else. To this extent, he returned to the cult of ignorance: a slap in the face for Pierre.

But nothing is ever quite the same the second time around. And no one could be less like the medieval n.o.bles than Montaigne, with his essaying and venturing, and his appending of uncertain codas to everything he wrote. His way of adding "though I don't know," implicitly or explicitly, to almost every thought he ever had sets him very far apart from the old ways. The ideals of his father survived in him after all, but in mutant form: softened, darkened, and with the certainty knocked out of them.

THE EXPERIMENT.

Perhaps this willingness to question certainties and prejudices just ran in the family. Amid the religious divide, the Eyquems were well known-"famous," said Montaigne-for their freedom from sectarian disharmony. Most remained Catholics, but several converted to Protestantism, causing remarkably little upset in the process. When one young Protestant Eyquem showed signs of extremism, Montaigne's friend La Boetie advised him to desist, "out of respect for the good reputation that the family you belong to has acquired by continual concord-a family that is as dear to me as any family in the world: Lord, what a family! from which there has never come any act other than that of a worthy man."

This admirable clan was also a fairly large one. Montaigne had seven brothers and sisters, not counting the two who were born before him and who died, leaving him the eldest. The age gap between the remaining siblings was considerable; at its widest, it would have felt like a generational divide, for Montaigne was already twenty-seven when his youngest brother, Bertrand, was born.

So far as is known, none of the younger siblings received as much attention or as exceptional an education as little Micheau. The daughters probably had the normal female education, which is to say almost none at all. Even the other sons were treated more conventionally, so far as is known. The only well-doc.u.mented child in the family is Michel de Montaigne-and he was not merely educated. He was made the object of an almost unprecedented pedagogic experiment.

The unusual treatment began soon after his birth, when Micheau was sent to live with a humble family in a nearby village. Having a peasant wet-nurse was normal enough, but Montaigne's father wanted his son to absorb an understanding of commoners' ways along with their breast-milk, so that he would grow up comfortable with the people who most needed a seigneur seigneur's help. Instead of bringing a nurse to the baby, therefore, he sent the baby to the nurse, and left him there long enough to be weaned. Even at the christening, Pierre had "people of the lowliest cla.s.s" hold the infant over the font. From the start, Montaigne had the impression at once of being a peasant among peasants, and of being very special and different. This is the mixture of feelings that would stay with him for life. He felt ordinary, but knew that the very fact of realizing his ordinariness made him extraordinary.

The village plan had one downside which Pierre is unlikely to have considered. Living with strangers, Micheau must have failed to "bond" (as we might now say) with his real parents. This would apply to some extent to any wet-nursed child, but most would have contact with their mothers the rest of the time. Montaigne apparently did not. If twentieth- and twenty-first-century ideas have any validity (and perhaps they don't: motherchild bonding might prove as transient a fad as wet-nursing), such deprivation in the crucial first months of life would have affected Montaigne's relationship with his mother for ever. According to Montaigne's own a.s.sessment, however, the scheme worked beautifully, and he advised his readers, where possible, to do the same. Let your children "be formed by fortune under the laws of the common people and of nature," he said.

However old he was when he was restored to the chateau-perhaps he was one or two-the break with his adoptive family must have been abrupt indeed, for the second element of his experimental education would prove totally incompatible with the first. Back in his family home, little peasant Micheau was now to be brought up as a native speaker of Latin.

Until now, the language he had heard most, in his foster home, would have been the local Perigord dialect. If he was old enough to eat his hosts' food, he was old enough for his ear to become attuned to their language, although he was too young to speak it. He now had to leap from this to Latin, bypa.s.sing the language in which he would one day write: French. This was an astounding project for anyone even to think of, let alone put into effect, and it presented a practical difficulty. Pierre himself had minimal command of Latin; his wife and the servants knew none at all. Even in the wider world, a supply of native Latin speakers could no longer be found. How did Pierre think he was going to bring Montaigne up to be fluent in the language of Cicero and Virgil?

The solution he found was a two-part one. Step one was to engage a tutor who, though no native, did have near-flawless Latin. Pierre found a German named Dr. Horst, whose greatest qualification was having good Latin but almost no French, never mind Perigordian, so that he and young Micheau could communicate in only one way. Thus, from an early age-"before the first loosening of my tongue," as Montaigne put it-Dr. Horst or (in Latin) Horsta.n.u.s became the most important person in his life.

Step two was to ban everyone else in the household from speaking to Micheau in any living language. If they wanted to tell the boy to eat his breakfast, they had to do it using the Latin imperative and appropriate case-endings. They all duly set about learning a little, including Pierre himself, who worked to brush up his schoolboy knowledge. Thus, as Montaigne wrote, everyone benefited.

My father and mother learned enough Latin in this way to understand it, and acquired sufficient skill to use it when necessary, as did also the servants who were most attached to my service. Altogether, we Latinized ourselves so much that it overflowed all the way to our villages on every side, where there still remain several Latin names for artisans and tools that have taken root by usage. As for me, I was over six before I understood any more French or Perigordian than Arabic.

Thus, "without artificial means, without a book, without grammar or precept, without the whip, and without tears," Montaigne learned a Latin as fine as that spoken by his tutor, and with a more natural flow than Horst could have managed. When he later encountered other teachers, they complimented him on a Latin that was both technically perfect and down-to-earth.

Why did Pierre do it? This is one of those moments when the half-millennium gap between ourselves and our subject suddenly yawns at our feet. Most people today would think it crazy to separate parent and child for the sake of a dead language. But in the Renaissance, the prize was considered worth the sacrifice. Command of beautiful and grammatically perfect Latin was the highest goal of a humanistic education: it unlocked the door to the ancient world-considered the locus of all human wisdom-as well as to much of modern culture, since most scholars still wrote Latin. It offered entry to a good career: Latin was essential for legal and civil service. The language bestowed an almost magical blessing on anyone who spoke it. If you spoke well, you must be able to think well. Pierre wanted to give his son the best advantage imaginable: a link both to the lost paradise of antiquity and to a successful personal future.

The way way Pierre wanted Micheau to learn it also exemplified the ideals of the time. Most boys learned their Latin through painful effort at school, but the Romans had not done this: they spoke it as naturally as they breathed air. It was because moderns had to learn the language artificially that they were unable ever to match the ancients in wisdom or greatness of soul-or so went the theory. Pierre wanted Micheau to learn it also exemplified the ideals of the time. Most boys learned their Latin through painful effort at school, but the Romans had not done this: they spoke it as naturally as they breathed air. It was because moderns had to learn the language artificially that they were unable ever to match the ancients in wisdom or greatness of soul-or so went the theory.

It was anything but a cruel experiment, at least in obvious respects. The new theories of education emphasized that learning should be pleasurable, and that the only motivation children needed was their inborn desire for knowledge. When he was a little older, Montaigne would learn Greek in a spirit of fun too. "We volleyed our conjugations back and forth," he recalled, "like those who learn arithmetic and geometry by such games as checkers and chess." His Greek did not stick: he later admitted to having little knowledge of the language. But, in general, the hedonistic approach to education did make a difference to him. Having been guided early in life by his own curiosity alone, he grew up to be an independent-minded adult, following his own path in everything rather than deferring to duty and discipline-an outcome perhaps more far-reaching than his father had bargained for.

Other aspects of Montaigne's early life were governed by similar principles of ease. It was thought that "it troubles the tender brains of children to wake them in the morning with a start," so Pierre had his son charmed out of bed like a cobra every day by the plangent sound of a lute or other musical instrument. Corporal punishment was almost unknown to him; in his entire boyhood, he was only twice struck with a rod, and then very gently. It was an education of "wisdom and tact."

Pierre had got his ideas from his beloved scholar friends, and perhaps also from people he met in Italy, though the main ideologue to whom such an approach can be traced was a Dutchman, Erasmus of Rotterdam, who had written on education while based in Italy two decades earlier. Montaigne wrote that the scheme had been born from his father's having made "all the inquiries a man can make, among men of learning and understanding." Typically for Pierre, it was at once a scholarly notion and a flighty one. It certainly bore the mark of Pierre, rather than Antoinette, and one would give a lot to know what she thought about the project. If Montaigne's peasant fostering had already set him apart from her, this stage of his education emphasized that separation even further. They were now living in the same house, but linguistically and culturally they were on different planets. She is unlikely to have become very proficient in Latin, although Montaigne says she learned some for his benefit. According to him, Pierre's skills remained rudimentary too. If the experiment was genuinely as rigorous as his account implies (a big if), both parents now had only a stilted and unnatural way of talking to their son. Even Horst could not speak to him in a fully spontaneous manner, however profound his knowledge. So much for "naturalness." One suspects-and hopes-that the rules were broken from time to time. Yet Montaigne mentions nothing of that. Nor does he seem to think that the experiment was anything less than a huge success.

[image]

(ill.u.s.tration credit i3.3)

In terms of making him a native Latinist, it did bear fruit in these early years, but the seeds of that fruit did not germinate further. Eventually, through lack of practice, he ended up on the same level as any other well-educated young n.o.bleman. The language lurked deep within him, though. When his father fainted from a kidney-stone attack, decades later, Montaigne exclaimed in Latin as he caught him in his arms.

More lasting were the effects of Montaigne's education on his personality. As happens with much early life experience, it benefited him in exactly the areas where it also damaged him. It set him apart from his household and from his whole contemporary world. This gave him independence of mind, but may have inclined him to a certain detachment in relationships. It gave him great expectations, since he grew up in the company of the greatest writers of antiquity rather than the provincial French of his neighborhood. Yet it also cut off other, more conventional, ambitions, because it led him to question everything that other people strove for. The young Montaigne was unique. He did not need to compete; he barely needed to exert himself. He grew up constrained by some of the most bizarre limits ever imposed on a child, and at the same time had almost unlimited freedom. He was a world unto himself.

In the end he acquired good French, though never the restrained, immaculate version subsequent centuries liked to insist upon in their writers. He wrote idiosyncratically; some would accuse him of sounding like an undisciplined yokel. Still, French was his language of choice-not Latin. In the Essays Essays he gives an odd reason for this. French could not be expected to last as long as the cla.s.sical languages, he said; thus, his writings were doomed to ephemerality, and he could write in any way he liked without worrying about his reputation. The fact that it was not frozen in rigid perfection appealed to him on principle: if it was flawed, there was less pressure to use it impeccably. he gives an odd reason for this. French could not be expected to last as long as the cla.s.sical languages, he said; thus, his writings were doomed to ephemerality, and he could write in any way he liked without worrying about his reputation. The fact that it was not frozen in rigid perfection appealed to him on principle: if it was flawed, there was less pressure to use it impeccably.

Montaigne usually disliked idealistic schemes, but in this case he approved of his father's experiment. When he wrote about education himself, his ideas emerged as a more moderate version of Pierre's-which were too extreme ever to have much appeal to anyone else. The contemporary Montaignesque writer Tabourot des Accords did suggest that a group of gentlemen might pool resources to bring up their children in a sort of Latin commune, since it was too hard to manage alone, but there is no sign that this was actually done.

Less bizarre aspects of the sixteenth century's "child centered" education did flourish through the years, all the way to the present. In the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau made a cult of bringing up children in the light of nature; he borrowed some of his ideas from Montaigne, and especially from the uncharacteristically prescriptive essay Montaigne wrote about education.

He had to be prescriptive, for the essay "Of Education" was more or less commissioned from him by a neighbor, the pregnant Diane de Foix, comtesse de Gurson, who wanted Montaigne's opinion on how she should give her child (a.s.suming it was a boy) the best start in life. Montaigne's advice shows how pleased he was with his own early experiences. First, he said, she should restrain her maternal instincts sufficiently to bring in an outsider to be her son's mentor instead; parents are too much at the mercy of their emotions. They cannot stop worrying about whether the boy might catch a cold in the rain, or be thrown from his horse, or have his skin cut in fencing practice. A tutor can be tougher. On the other hand, he must not be allowed to be cruel. Learning should be a pleasure, and children should grow up to imagine wisdom with a smiling face, not a fierce and terrifying one.

He fulminates against the brutal methods of most schools. "Away with violence and compulsion!" If you enter a school in lesson time, he says, "you hear nothing but cries, both from tortured boys and from masters drunk with rage." All this achieves is to put children off learning for life.

Often, books need not be used at all. One learns dancing by dancing; one learns to play the lute by playing the lute. The same is true of thinking, and indeed of living. Every experience can be a learning opportunity: "a page's prank, a servant's blunder, a remark at table." The child should learn to question everything: to "pa.s.s everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority and trust." Traveling is useful; so is socializing, which teaches the child to be open to others and to adapt to anyone he finds around him. Eccentricities should be ironed out early, because they make it difficult to get on with others. "I have seen men flee from the smell of apples more than from harquebus fire, others take fright at a mouse, others throw up at the sight of cream, and others at the plumping of a feather bed." All this stands in the way of good relationships and of good living. It can be avoided, for young human beings are malleable.

Or at least, they are malleable up to a point. Montaigne soon changes tack. Whatever you do, he says, you cannot really change inborn disposition. You can guide it or train it, but not get rid of it. In another essay he wrote, "There is no one who, if he listens to himself, does not discover in himself a pattern all his own, a ruling pattern, which struggles against education."