"L'oreiller militaire français"

Signed autograph postcard "L.D." by Lawrence Durrell addressed to Jani Brun, written in red felt-tip pen, on the verso of a reproduction of a small poster Mystification conceived by Jacques Yonnet "Pour nos Hôpitaux, Ambulances, Trains sanitaires, demandez l'Oreiller Militaire Français qui procure le plus doux des soulagements. [...]" ["For our Hospitals, Ambulances, Hospital trains, ask for the French Military Pillow which provides the sweetest relief. [...]"], advertisement extracted from a newspaper taped "en direct avec une glande virile..." ["live with a virile gland..."], envelope included.
The writer organizes a trip with his young Montpellier mistress: "Buttons. je ne vous crois pas ! je suis ici pour 15 jours encore - puis Genève pour une semaine" ["Buttons. I don't believe you! I'm here for another 15 days - then Geneva for a week"].
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 Henry Miller also fell under the charm of "Buttons," praising her beauty and eternal youth in exceptional unpublished letters.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.