1816, were both attached to Pierre-Joseph by bonds o f close affec
tion. The first impression he recounts o f his childhood is a vividly
recollected jealousy at the birth of Jean-Etienne, a feeling which
soon passed so completely that later he was able to say, ‘I never
loved anyone so much as my brother.’ Jean-Etienne, indeed, seems
to have resembled him more, in the independence of his character,
than the rather weak and dependent Charles.
The second event that Proudhon remembered clearly from his
childhood was the siege of Besangon during the latter end of the
Napoleonic wars; it was at this period that Claude-Frangois
decided to abandon his employment and set up on his own as a
brewer and tavern-keeper. He conducted his business on prin
ciples whose very excellence robbed him of financial success.
Forty years afterwards his son was to remark, ‘since the day he
ceased his brewing I have never drunk such good beer,’ and
Claude-Frangois not only gave good quality, but also sold his
beer almost at cost price. When his friends exhorted him to sell
at the market price, he would reply mildly: ‘Not at all. So much
for my costs, so much for my work— that ir my price!’
Pierre-Joseph, at eight years old, was intrigued by this problem
o f principles as, serving beer in the family tavern, he watched his
father’s methods working out to the detriment o f the family. ‘I
realised perfectly the loyalty and the regularity in the paternal
method, but I also saw to no less a degree the risk it involved. My
conscience approved o f the one; my feelings for our security
pushed me towards the other. It was an enigma.’ It was also the
boy’s first introduction to those contradictions inherent in social
and economic relationships which played a most significant part
in his later thought.
In 1817 occurred the great famine in Eastern France, due partly
to crop failures and partly to the economic aftermath o f the
Napoleonic wars. The Proudhons, having no surplus to pay ex
travagant prices, went hungry like most o f their neighbours, and
Pierre-Joseph would go into the fields with his parents to gather
ears of unripe rye so that they could make some substitute for
bread. But it was not merely the general scarcity that afflicted the
family, for by the following year Claude-Frangois’ experiment in
tavern management on the basis o f unadulterated morality had
ended in bankruptcy. There remained one recourse for the penni
less family. Catherine Proudhon’s mother retained Tournesi’s
THE HILLS OF THE JURA