Voltaire now and then

 

We had a tea and pastry at a Versoix tea room after dropping Sherlock off at Furry Friends. We knew he'd have a good day. We were planning a good day too doing things we couldn't 

Drivingdown a small side street, I noticed this painting on a building. Voltaire was talking to a man who could be Jean-Jacques Rousseau or maybe not. I know the men were contemporaries. I knew they had met up in Motiers, the tiny, tiny village where I first lived in Switzerland. But the other man in the painting was holding plans for Versoix, and I wasn't sure what Rousseau would be doing with those.

It did make sense that they would be enjoying tea. Voltaire had a copy of his book Candide, which I'd read decades ago. Maybe he was offering a copy to the mystery man.

 Jean-Jaques Rousseau is it him in the painting or not?

Anyone living in Geneva who had crossed the border near the airport to France finds themselves in Ferney-Voltaire where the philosopher/writer also lived. His statue is in the middle of the village. 

The Voltaire Museum in Geneva in a house where he lived 1755-1760. It is on my list of places to visit.

All this reminded me of the book by Dinah Lee Küng, A Visit from Voltaire. The description of this fun read is below.

"You can't keep a good man down . . . even when he's dead! When an American mother and ex-journalist is overwhelmed by her new Swiss home, a visitor pops out of nowhere offering to relieve her son's asthma, her husband's distracted absence and her problems grappling with village life. Is he the village crackpot or - as he claims - the Greatest Mind of the Eighteenth Century? This talkative character in knee breeches and a powdered wig is the last straw. Though she begs him to disappear, he unpacks his moldy trunk and a lifetime of stories instead. Slowly "V." becomes her stalwart best friend as they laugh, bicker and he teaches her the best lesson of all: how to live life to its fullest."

A side street can be more than a short cut.