Free Harmony In Flesh and Black by Nicholas Kilmer Page A

long as Smykal’s undiscovered body festered in secret, surrounded by the trophies of his hobby—correction: his art —it was probably just as well for Fred to be visible, looking his normal self.
    â€œGolly, Fred,” Molly had said, driving with all deliberate speed through the dark, wet streets of Arlington. “You look better than an eight-dollar salad in your costume, and for goodness’ sake, it’s only a party.”
    Fred had angrily thrown together something resembling a camouflage outfit for jungle warfare as conceived by Bill Mauldin in 1944.
    â€œRemind me,” Molly said, “what they mean by their theme of the evening, ‘In the Pre-Raphaelite Mode.’”
    Fred wrenched his mind away from where it was and toward the companion he had chosen. “I will instruct you, dear young lady,” he said, “if you will forgive a man for having been infected by a brief time of youth misspent among the undergraduates at Harvard, a university in the American Northeast.”
    â€œLay on,” Molly said.
    Fred harrumphed and commenced. “The Pre-Raphaelites are to painting what ‘Italianette’ is to architecture. Invented in the late eighteen hundreds by exhausted English Puritans who had not given up romance, the style works like an omelet made with boiled eggs. They—William Morris, Burne-Jones, Lord Leighton, and so on—undertook to imitate the style and ideals of fifteenth-century Italian painters who were in turn imitating the style and ideals of Roman painting, which had entirely disappeared before they started imitating it but which they guessed must have looked like the Greek statues the Romans had stolen. The nineteenth-century version, of course, was improved by Christian and Victorian ideals.
    â€œThe Pre-Raphaelites eschewed representing such common and depressing contemporary themes as coal mines, hangings, or the profession of collecting night soil, and instead chose imagined ancient scenes to elevate the spirit and demonstrate morality. The subjects are often nude except for their suppressed genitals—Burne-Jones used the airbrush long before it was invented—or they wear Roman dress, or medieval dress based on the Roman. Except for Rossetti, all of these painters depict the traditional British stiff upper lip, though other exposed parts remain flaccid. William Morris had an extraordinary thing for feet.”
    â€œAh,” Molly said. “The perfect choice for a theme party in Boston. You have been most helpful, Fred.”
    Once surrounded by the party, Molly complained, “Apart from the serving wonks and wenches, the Pre-Raphaelite theme eludes me.”
    â€œBostonians are shy,” Fred told her. “Unlike myself.”
    Few of the elect had chosen to come in costume, something that, at the last moment, had been Fred’s only option. Most of the men wore black tie, the more adventuresome showing a dab of color at the waist. The women wore their standard evening things, which this year looked like outfits designed, and then rejected as too silly, in the late fifties: short skirts, with large spots, checks, and bows serving no structural function.
    The Gardner’s board of trustees had wisely voted to compel youths and maidens, hired to take coats and serve champagne, to dress according to the theme. They were all young and comely. The youths wore tights and velvet doublets from a costumer; the tights and doublets were of different colors. The maidens wore diaphanous pleated tunics, some long, some quite short, in a variety of pastels.
    â€œYou see,” Fred told Molly, “you could have been a bacchante. You would be perfect in a belted sheet.”
    She’d chosen to wear her basic black, which made her look delicious and suited her to most occasions.
    â€œAnd you could have worn my yellow Easter panty hose,” Molly countered, accepting champagne from a maiden.
    They went back down to the