Voltaire's Framework

A visitor to Ferney in 1774 recorded Voltaire's day, and Currey reprinted it. He spent the whole morning in bed, reading and dictating new work to a secretary. He rose and dressed at noon and then received visitors or, if there were none, kept working on coffee and chocolate. He did not eat lunch. Between two and four he and his principal secretary drove out in a carriage to inspect the estate, then he worked again until eight, when he joined his niece Madame Denis and guests for supper. Often he went on dictating after supper deep into the night. The secretary reckoned they worked eighteen to twenty hours a day. The framework keeps that shape: a four-hour night, which is the chart's inference since no bedtime survives, then four blocks of creative work around the estate business and one long social dinner. It is the working day of someone who has arranged for everything else to be done by other people. Read it as a picture of total absorption, not as a plan.