Laudator Temporis Acti

Montaigne, Essays 1.3 (tr. M.A. Screech):

The Emperor Maximilian, the great-grandfather of the present King Philip, was a monarch fully endowed with great advantages; among others, he was singularly handsome. One of his humours was flat contrary to that of princes who, to get through important business, make a throne of their lavatory: he never allowed a valet such intimacy as to see him on his privy. He would even hide away to pass water, being as scrupulous as a maiden about uncovering, for a doctor or anyone else, those parts which are customarily kept hidden. I myself, so shameless in speech, have nevertheless in my complexion a touch of such modesty: except when strongly moved by necessity or pleasure I rarely let anyone's eyes see those members or those actions which our customs ordain to be hidden. I find this all the more constraining in that I do not think it becoming in a man, above all in one of my calling. But Maximilian became so scrupulous that he expressly commanded in his will that linen drawers should be tied on him when he was dead. He should have added a codicil saying that the man who pulled them on ought to be blindfold!

Notorious among those princes who made "a throne of their lavatory" was Lyndon Johnson. See Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. III: Master of the Senate (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), p. 122:

[Luther E.] Jones, a neat young man who was invariably well scrubbed, with his hair carefully slicked down, was reserved, almost prim, in physical matters. "Any kind of coarseness or crudeness just disgusted him," a friend says. Johnson began summoning Jones to take dictation from him while he was sitting on the toilet. "At first," [Gene] Latimer says, "L.E. attempted to stand away from the door, but Johnson insisted he stand right over him. L.E. would stand with his head averted, and take dictation." As both Latimer and Jones understood, the tactic was a "method of control"—employed to humiliate Jones, and make him acknowledge who was boss. Years later, Richard Goodwin, a speechwriter who had just begun working for Johnson, was summoned to the President's bathroom in the White House. Watching Johnson, "apparently in the midst of defecation," staring at him "intently, looking for any sign of embarrassment," and "lowering his tone, forcing me to approach more closely," while "calculating my reaction," Goodwin realized that he was being given a kind of "test." Goodwin passed—and so had many of the staff members to whom Johnson had given the same test during his years in the House of Representatives.

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