"D'avoir soixante ans et d'être aimé (très mal d'ailleurs) par les vampires"

Autograph postcard by Lawrence Durrell signed "Dracula" addressed to Jani Brun, written in blue ink, reproduction of a drawing by Marcel Vaysse "Ils sortent...tous les soirs" ["They go out...every evening"], envelope included.
The writer teasingly mocks his young Montpellier mistress with humor: "Darling Janie - maintenant qu'il fait beau la saison est ouverte et malgré mon age je reçois pas mal des invitations; souvent les filles de dix ans m'envoient des propositions inscrites par télégramme. J'estime que le rôle de papa gâteux me va bien ("le gâtisme c'est le relachment des sphinctères" (Dictionnaire medicale - Pujot)". Je vais en Grèce avec, une, 2, 3, 4 fille(s) plus fidé(?) que vous pour faire des reportages appellation contrôlée. D'avoir soixante ans et d'être aimé (très mal d'ailleurs) par les vampires - n'est pas que c'est splendide ? Dracula" ["Darling Janie - now that the weather is fine the season is open and despite my age I receive quite a few invitations; often ten-year-old girls send me proposals written by telegram. I think the role of a doting daddy suits me well ('dotage is the loosening of the sphincters' (Medical Dictionary - Pujot)). I'm going to Greece with, one, 2, 3, 4 girl(s) more faithful(?) than you to do some appellation contrôlée reporting. To be sixty years old and to be loved (very badly moreover) by vampires - isn't that splendid? Dracula"]
After many years spent in Greece, Egypt and Rhodes, the traveling writer Lawrence Durrell was forced to flee Cyprus following popular uprisings that led the island to its independence from the British crown. Rich only with a shirt and a typewriter but crowned with the success of his novel Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, he arrived in France in 1956 and settled in the Languedoc village of Sommières. In the "Tartès house," his large dwelling 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 woman from Montpellier in her thirties with devastating beauty, who worked at the Department of Antiquities at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was nicknamed "Buttons" in memory of their first meeting, where 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, particularly to England, from where she received extensive correspondence from the writer as well as original artworks signed with his artist pseudonym, Oscar Epfs.