How to Live (8 page)

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 Béarn 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 Château 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 documents. 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
, it could have
been to ensure that his book appealed to the right sort of noble, 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:

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
, 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 circumcision, 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 document, 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 documents 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 document 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 document drawn up between mother and son on August 31, 1568, asserted Antoinette’s right to receive “all filial honor, respect, and service,” as well as servants to attend her and a hundred
livres tournois
a year for petty cash.
She, in turn, had to acknowledge his “command and mastery” of the château 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 Léonor 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 Léonor, 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 circumvent”; 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 ineptitude 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
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 noble 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 nobleman he was obliged to carry a sword, but there is no indication in the
Essays
that he unsheathed it very often. One contemporary, Brantôme, 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 Câteau Cambrésis 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 masse
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 François I. Later kings gave up on François’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.

(illustration 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 sexual 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
.
He did manage to maintain another record begun by his father, using a printed calendar called the
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.