"Tout le monde cherche quelqu'un de fidèle tout en restant 'libre' en échange !"

Autograph postcard signed by Lawrence Durrell addressed to Jani Brun, written in black felt-tip pen, on the verso of a view of the banks of the Vidourle at Sommières.
Admirable and humorous confession by the writer to his young lover: "Tout le monde cherche quelqu'un de fidèle tout en restant 'libre' en échange ! Bientôt je serai impuissant et le problème n'existera plus !" ["Everyone is looking for someone faithful while remaining 'free' in return! Soon I will be impotent and the problem will no longer exist!"]. Durrell reflects on his numerous feminine conquests ("Pour l'instant je suis comblé de belles et j'en profite - pourquoi pas !" ["For now I am overwhelmed with beauties and I'm taking advantage of it - why not!"]) and gives precious advice to his addressee, who had chosen to remain independent despite the writer's entreaties: "Tu n'es pas heureuse en amour parce que tu es intéressée - tu cherche [sic] des combines toujours au lieu de te donner sans réserve ni réservation ! C'est quand on deviens [sic] esclave qu'on est vraiment heureux !" ["You are not happy in love because you are self-interested - you are always looking for schemes instead of giving yourself without reserve or reservation! It's when one becomes a slave that one is truly happy!"]


After many years spent in Greece, Egypt and Rhodes, the traveler-writer Lawrence Durrell was forced to flee Cyprus following popular uprisings that led the island to its independence from the British crown. Rich only in a shirt and a typewriter but crowned with the success of his novel Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, he arrived in 1956 in France and settled in the Languedoc village of Sommières. In the "maison Tartès," his large house surrounded by trees, he wrote the second part of his work, his monumental Avignon Quintet, devoted himself to painting and received his illustrious friends, including the couple Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, London publisher Alan G. Thomas, and his two daughters Penelope and Sappho.
Among the olive trees and under the Mediterranean sun, he met in the mid-1960s the young and sparkling "Jany" (Janine Brun), a thirty-something from Montpellier of devastating beauty, who worked at the Department of Antiquities at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was nicknamed "Buttons" in memory of their first meeting, when the young woman wore a dress covered with buttons. Henry Miller also fell under the charm of "Buttons," praising her beauty and eternal youth in exceptional unpublished letters. The three companions spent memorable Parisian evenings of which we retain precious autograph traces through their epistolary exchanges. Recommended by Durrell, she made numerous trips notably to England from where she received extensive correspondence from the writer as well as original works of art signed with his artistic pseudonym, Oscar Epfs.