he would search through the city archives for a clue to the sup
posed malediction. The curse doubtless existed only in his
eccentric imagination, but it is true that the ‘left’ Proudhons were
characterised by an unusual lack o f practical success. Claude-
Fran5ois, Pierre-Joseph’s father, was typical, for, though he was
extremely hard-working and conscientious, he remained poor
until his death.
His amiable ineffectualness was partly balanced by his wife’s
strength of character. To her son she was ‘a proud peasant...
free, busy and uncrushed by life’, and Charles Weiss, the Besangon
writer, described her as a woman of ‘heroic’ character. She had
been a cook, and brought into her household an industry which
helped to tide over the many crises of family life. Like her father,
she was a republican, and transmitted to her eldest son not only
this characteristic of the redoubtable Tournesi, but also much of
his appearance, for Pierre-Joseph grew to resemble the old soldier
both in his combative character and also in ‘my brow, my eyes,
my free laughter and my broad chest.’
Pierre-Joseph’s admiration for his mother was lifelong. ‘To
her,’ he said many years afterwards, ‘I owe everything.’ She seems
to have been the most important personal influence in his early
life, and his attachment to her had a great effect even on his
mature thought. He remembered her strength of character and
integrity of principle, her capacity for hard work and self-sacrifice.
He remembered also how these characteristics were combined
with a simple piety, with an absence of any desire to mingle in
the affairs of men, with an unquestioning peasant acceptance
of woman’s position as manager of the household. It was accord
ing to whether they reflected these qualities that he was always
inclined to judge the women he met; few passed this severe
test.
A t the time of his marriage, Claude-Frangois Proudhon (he was
then twenty-nine and his wife five years older) was not entirely
propertyless, since he owned his house and clung to it in the
deepest adversity, but if he possessed any land it was not sufficient
for independence, since he was obliged to work as a brewer and a
cooper.
His five children— all boys— were born between 1809 and 1816.
The third and fourth died in early childhood, but the second,
Jean-Etienne, born in 1811, and the youngest, Charles, born in
THE HILLS OF THE JURA