Becoming Montaigne 2: Appearances

It seems strange to Michel de Montaigne that every creature but a human is judged for its natural properties.  A horse is judged for its vigour and dexterity, not its harness. A greyhound is rated for its speed, not its neckband; a hawk for its wings, not its bells. So why are people judged by the shiny things they accumulate?

“Draw back the bed-curtains and look at the Emperor," Montaigne says. "He's a commonplace man, baser maybe than the least of his subjects. Cowardice, doubt, ambition, despair and envy agitate him like anyone else. Do fever, migraine and gout spare him any more than us?”

No.

“When old age is upon his shoulders, do the archers of his guard carry it for him?”

No.

“When the fear of death grips him, is he reassured by the assistance of the gentlemen of the bedchamber?”

Probably not, though I'm not sure what a gentleman of the bedchamber does.

“A man might have a grand style, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so much income – but all this is around him, not in him. You don’t buy a cat in a bag. If you’re shopping for a horse, you take off its trappings and examine it naked and exposed.”

When an ancient poet tells the Macedonian general, Antigonus, that he is the Son of the Sun, Antigonus replies: “The man who slops out my chamber pot doesn’t know about that!”  Montaigne sees that as Antigonus' way of reminding the poet that we all put on our suit of armour the same way, one leg at a time.

More than thirty years ago, while covering a film festival in Toronto, I share a hotel elevator with Jane Fonda and her dog. She’s wearing comfortable sweats and I smile at her as I would at anyone in an elevator. But I don’t acknowledge that I realize who she is. Like Antigonus with his chamber pot, she's just a woman with a dog in a hotel elevator, even though the dog is probably allowed in the hotel only because it’s the companion of the woman known as “Jane Fonda.”

The person I acknowledge with a smile is the person she is when she isn’t “Jane Fonda.” I feel as if this person, who is possibly her actual self, is worthy of polite acknowledgment too. The person I acknowledge perhaps wonders if I even know that I’m in an elevator with “Jane Fonda”. And if I know that I am, why am I pretending to be indifferent to this stroke of luck? Am I so important in my own being that I can’t take a moment to acknowledge “Jane Fonda”, and to tell her that I liked her a lot in Cat Ballou? What shade of creep am I?

Then the elevator door slides open and she and the dog step out, and there’s nothing wrong with any of us. Especially the dog. 

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