CROWNING THE COMMON MAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 354, 15 May 1928, Page 4

CROWNING THE COMMON MAN

“You must make a man a king in his own country.” Every husband has handed out this counsel of perfection, either verbatim or in words to that effect, to a wife who failed to come up to scratch. (Or who scratched too efficiently.) The average wife of the average middle-class husband is usually rather good at this crowning business. But the trouble is that His Average Majesty seldom cares for the pattern of the crown she selects. In contains too few of the glittering jewels of illusion, whose iridescent colours make a more vivid appeal to his unsophisticated taste than does the flawless diamond of truth. The sub-ject-wife is more prone to crown qualities of the heart than of the head. A natural homage, since the average man can often give the average woman a considerable lead in the matter of those virtues that are enshrined within the human breast, as distinct from the more deliberate pre-occupations of the human brain. But this is not at all the sort of vassalage His Average Majesty desires. He wants to be acknowledged top dog In the realm of the intellect. And the average woman finds it increasingly difficult to humour this whim of the average man. Since her own mental activities have expanded, and regions beyond the hearthstone have opened up to her, she is no longer prepared to sit at the feet of His Average Majesty and hail his commentative platitudes on world-events with salaams of worshipful Ignorance. With increasing zest she challenges his second-hand wisdom over the breakfast coffee-pot; and brings the wrath exacerbated by lese-majeste about her Independent head. The kingdom totters. The subject-wife rebels. She can crown the Common Man with the inherent sovereignties of his romantic heart; but not with the didactic diadem to which her own shingled head has as much right as his. He can be her king, in short, only so long as he is content to spell it sheik, and not worry about what goes on behind the mental veils of his harem queen. ________E.V.