The Herbs of Provence

Herb Entwistle, 56, expatriate English painter. Herb and wife, Fiona, were drawn to the town of Aups several years ago from the wet and blustery Orkney Islands. “I just couldn’t bear painting there any more,” confesses Herb. “Too depressing by half. Here, the light is magic and the weather so mild, so dry, one can paint constantly.” Indeed, Herb credits the weather for the best work of his career. “I did this house over in Gnaux four years ago in a single day. One coat. And me and the wife drives by there this last weekend, and it still looks bloody pristine, it does!”

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Herb Poincaire, 47, is the son of a French dad and an American mom who divorced some decades ago but never resolved their custody battle. As a result, Herb has shuttled to and fro most of his life between the Poincaire family villa at Bringnoles and his mother’s family’s ranchette in suburban Fontana, Calif. Has this affected Herb Poincaire’s life? Well, his 7th-grade Fontana math teacher, for example, positively burbles about his grasp of fractions; while the steward of his private Brignole wine cellar remarks on “Maitre Herb’s” uncanny nose for a ripe Merlot.

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Herb Plant, 36, is not, strictly speaking, a resident provencale but a travel agent based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he’s known as “Provence’s Unofficial Ambassador,” who spends as much time as possible in his beloved Provence, where he’s known as “a Canadian travel agent.”

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Hector Herbert, 62, became a “Herb” by accident in 1978, when Hurricane Solange rampaged through Cannes and tore away a large section of the sign above his store. What had been a mediocre business as Journaux et Tabac Hector Herbert suddenly became a flourishing business as homesick Yanks and Brits flocked to buy Luckies and the Economist at Journaux et Tabac . . . Herb . . . . Hector legally changed his name to Herb and has renamed his daughter, Gabrielle, Tiffany.

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H.E.R.B. Butz-Gurney, 99, the noted English military historian, has lived in Provence ever since deserting the British Expeditionary Force as a bugle boy in Flanders in 1917. His given names of Horace Ethelred Rawleigh Butwyn being virtually unpronounceable by the French, they were long since contracted by friends to the simple “Herb”--not that Herb would know, having been stone deaf for lo, these many decades!*