Valentine From Paris: 50 Shades of Sepia

Un baiser c’est comme un poème! (French sweetheart postcards below: Theadora Brack’s archives)

C’est lui parler pour un instant (Image: T. Brack’s archives)

By Theadora Brack

In celebration of Saint-Valentine’s Day, next week I plan to share my all-time favorite love letter by poet and founding surrealist Guillaume Apollinaire to Madeleine Pagès, written in 1915 while he was enlisted in the French army’s 38th Regiment of Field Artillery during the Great War.

Apollinaire’s prose is pretty darn steamy. You are in for a treat, in fifty shades of glorious sepia.

In the meantime, let’s salute to love with our annual toast. And yes, let’s share another sweet-and-sour Sidecar!

Repeating myself: Invented at the Ritz during the aforementioned Great War by head barman Frank Meier (and author of the “Artistry of Mixing Drinks”—Harry’s New York Bar devotees, look away!), you go and grab the cognac and Cointreau while I squeeze…