"Si tu es libre de me joindre... faites moi signed"

Suggestive autograph postcard signed by Lawrence Durrell addressed to Jani Brun, written in violet felt-tip pen, on the verso of a reproduction of a sculpture representing a satyr, envelope attached.
"Buttons dear. J'arrive mardi pour deux nuits à Paris - au Royale. Si tu es libre de me joindre... faites moi signed. Suis fatigué après Athens, Londres, Edinburgh! Love. Larry Durrell." ["Buttons dear. I arrive Tuesday for two nights in Paris - at the Royale. If you are free to join me... let me know. Am tired after Athens, London, Edinburgh! Love. Larry Durrell."]
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 (Les citrons acides), 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 vivacious "Jany" (Janine Brun), a thirty-something woman from Montpellier of devastating beauty, who worked at the Antiquities department of 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 Henry Miller also fell under the charm of "Buttons," praising her beauty and eternal youth in exceptional unpublished letters.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 keep 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 artist pseudonym, Oscar Epfs.