That is, indeed, his appointed missionary work; and still more definitely, his wife’s.
The giving of loaves is indeed the lady’s first duty; the first, but the least.
Next, comes the giving of brooches;—seeing that her people are dressed charmingly and neatly, as well as herself, and have pretty furniture, like herself.[7]
But her chief duty of all—is to be, Herself, lovely.
“That through her smocke, wrought with silk,
The flesh be seen as white as milke.”[8]
Flesh, ladies mine, you observe; and not any merely illuminated resemblance of it, after the fashion of the daughter of Ethbaal. It is your duty to be [[213]]lovely, not by candlelight, but sunshine; not out of a window or opera-box, but on the bare ground.
Which that you may be,—if through the smocke the flesh, then, much more, through the flesh, the spirit, must be seen “as white as milke.”
I have just been drawing, or trying to draw, Giotto’s ‘Poverty’ (Sancta Paupertas) at Assisi. You may very likely know the chief symbolism of the picture: that Poverty is being married to St. Francis, and that Christ marries them, while her bare feet are entangled in thorns, but behind her head is a thicket of rose and lily. It is less likely you should be acquainted with the farther details of the group.
The thorns are of the acacia, which, according to tradition, was used to weave Christ’s crown. The roses are in two clusters,—palest red,[9] and deep crimson; the one on her right, the other on her left; above her head, pure white on the golden ground, rise the Annunciation Lilies. She is not crowned with them, observe; they are behind her: she is crowned only with her own hair, wreathed in a tress with which she had bound her short bridal veil. For dress, she has—her smocke only; and that torn, and torn again, and patched, diligently; except just at the shoulders, and a little below the throat, where Giotto [[214]]has torn it, too late for her to mend; and the fair flesh is seen through, so white that one cannot tell where the rents are, except when quite close.