THE EXILEas his freedom to enter France was acknowledged, it did not
matter greatly to him whether he was in Brussels or the Faubourg
Montmartre. N ow he proposed to remain in Belgium not only
the rest o f the winter, but also the ‘good season’ of 1861, and when
Garniers refused to print War and Peace he remarked bitterly:
‘What use would it be to return to my country if my thought
remained stricken with ostracism?’ Indeed, it was only the
thought of his friends that really made him regret Paris. ‘It is
impossible, after fifty and in a strange country, to make true
friends once again.’ he told Gouvernet. ‘It is like the first love
which one never replaces.’
It is to this period, when Proudhon was marking time in the
half-world of those who are exiled by financial rather than poli
tical necessity, that we owe a group o f letters which paint an
interesting picture o f the more intimate life o f this expatriate
family. Particularly vivid is the glimpse o f its domestic arrange
ments given in a letter to Buzon, the Bordeaux wine merchant, on
New Year’s Day, 1861.
‘I had the intention o f replying on the occasion o f the New
Year to your joyous letter, but behold the troubles o f a philo
sopher in the home, whose wife is her own cook, chamber maid,
etc.! As I receive many letters and am obliged to tie them into
packets every now and then, and as, on the other hand, I have
neither desk nor drawers, I put your letter by mistake with a mass
of others to which I had replied, at the bottom of a great chest
among my papers and manuscripts. On these papers my wife laid
some apples, as a provision for the winter, and on top o f the chest
a pile of linen washed the day before, for I must tell you that what
is called my study is a little room where my wife lays out her
laundry. So I work among books, papers, soap, household pro
visions, and everything connected with them. I live in the most
complete promiscuity. It is not very edifying, I know, in a thinker,
a reformer, but what would you have? One of my follies has been
the desire to have children.’
Within this cramped and frugal household the strains o f the
previous year had not entirely subsided, and Euphrasie was
becoming increasingly discontented with her position as a house
wife, showing exasperation when she had to spend her time at
the stove and could not take part in the conversations between
Proudhon and his friends. ‘This is what comes o f marrying a