The second to last paragraph of On Presumption includes this odd inclusion, one that appears in only one edition of Montaigne’s essays—and curiously enough, not in the last one that is considered canon. It is about, and many speculate written by, Marie de Gournay. I’ll go into more detail in a bit about some speculation why it’s authenticity has been challenged through the years, but here it is in its complete form:
I have taken pleasure in making public in several places the hopes I have for Marie de Gournay le Jars, my covenant daughter, whom I love indeed more than a daughter of my own, and cherish in my retirement and solitude as one of the best parts of my own being. She is the only person I still think about in the world. If youthful promise means anything, her soul will some day be capable of the finest things, among others of perfection in that most sacred kind of friendship which, so we read, her sex has not yet been able to attain. The sincerity and firmness of her character are already sufficient, her affection for me more than superabundant, and such, in short, that it leaves nothing to be desired, unless that her apprehension about my end, in view of my fifty-five years when I met her, would not torment her so cruelly. The judgment she made of the first Essays, she a woman, and in this age, and so young, and alone in her district, and the remarkable eagerness with which she loved me and wanted my friendship for a long time, simply through the esteem she formed for me before she had seen me, is a phenomenon very worthy of consideration.
Does this paragraph sound like Montaigne? If true, it is the only place in the essays where Montaigne expresses love for any woman, his wife included. Besides, the language “love indeed more than a daughter of my own” is kind of terrible, considering that Montaigne had a living daughter. I think the line “she is the only person I still think about in the world” could have come from him, expressed to her but not written down in this form. Much of the rest sounds like a letter of recommendation he penned to whom it may concern. And it would not surprise me if Montaigne gave her carte blanche to make such a statement and to include it in this section, which goes through a number of people he considers contemporary exempla.
Overall, I don’t think it’s entirely fake. My guess is that Montaigne, close to his death, gave her permission to include a section about herself and she overdid it with language he wouldn’t use. The fact that, even though she continued as his posthumous editor, she did not include it in the Bordeaux copy is telling. But it’s perhaps less telling than would appear on the surface—she may have overreacted to criticism and not wanting to admit that she was given permission to toss something of herself into an essay, she thought it best to just keep it out altogether.
Later in her editorial career, de Gournay was found to have fabricated a poem. From Phillipe Desan’s Montaigne biography:
For example, her rewriting of half the verses of Ronsard’s “Harangue du Duc de Guise aux Soldats de Metz” in 1624 deprives her of part of her editorial credibility. By trying to restore the prestige of the poets of the Pléiade in the time of Malherbe, she produced a counterfeit, claiming to have discovered a later version of Ronsard’s poem. It is thus permissible to have certain reservations about Gournay’s account.
So, she’s a complicated character and it’s reasonable to have some reservations about her. But at the same time, there’s no question that she had a heavy and positive influence on Montaigne’s later work and served admirably as executor of his essays after his death. In fact, he did a much better job of this than Montaigne did for La Boetie’s writing.
As for the nature of their relationship, that is something that will remain shrouded in mystery. All I know is that while Montaigne wrote that he did not think it possible for men and women to have close friendships, de Gournay’s close assistance began to change his mind about that, and for this alone she deserves an important place in his pantheon.
Leave a Reply