My Twenty-Five Years in Provence by Peter Mayle

Author:Peter Mayle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

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One other result of interviews that were published in the British press was that I began to receive letters from readers, and I’ve kept them all, hundreds of them. Most of them were to tell me how much they had enjoyed the book, which was kind. But a few readers, hot under the collar with indignation, wrote to tell me, without being specific, that I was ruining Provence. I wrote back, asking them how I was ruining it, but the only answer worth keeping was this one: “Your wretched book is in every lavatory in Wiltshire.”

That particular comment was easy to laugh off, but there were a few other, less picturesque accusations that I tried to take seriously, only to find that they had often been made from positions of considerable ignorance. For instance, one critic whom I replied to admitted that he had only been to Provence twice in five years, for a total of ten days. Even so, he knew that it was being ruined because the price of a cup of coffee in his favorite café had just gone up by ten centimes.

Among all the correspondence from readers, there was only one truly unpleasant letter, from a man who told me that I wrote drivel. This was the least offensive of a string of insults which he ended by telling me that he had enclosed a twenty-franc banknote, because he was certain I would never make any money as a writer. The tone of the letter was enough to make me want to reply, and the writer had made the mistake of using stationery with his address on it. I’m afraid I couldn’t resist. I sent his twenty-franc note back to him wrapped around a suppository. I never heard from him again.

My favorite letter came from a gentleman whose life, like mine, had undergone a drastic change. He was writing from his cell in Broadmoor, a well-known English prison, to tell me that reading a book of mine had given him, as he said, a day’s reprieve from his sentence. He signed off with the reassuring words “Nothing serious. Out soon.”

Letters were quite often replaced by personal visits. Readers who were on vacation would arrive at the house in cars, on bicycles, even on foot, looking for half an hour’s distraction. In fact, it was sometimes a welcome distraction for me, too, a chance to leave the typewriter and my struggle with the alphabet, and sign a well-thumbed copy of a book or two. I’d go back to work greatly encouraged. There’s nothing like an appreciative word from a satisfied reader.

One journalistic moment that I still treasure was the interview conducted by a serious young man who came armed with questions I’d never been asked before. What was my father’s occupation? Where had I gone to school? Did I have any children? I was puzzled by these questions because they had nothing to do with Provence, so I eventually asked the journalist where his interview was going to appear.

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