User:Philologia Sæculārēs/Archibald and the Masses

Archibald and the Masses

"Archibald and the Masses" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the United States in the August 1935 edition of Cosmopolitan, and in the United Kingdom in the February 1936 issue of the Strand. It was included in the collection Young Men in Spats (1936). It is one of the few Wodehouse works which directly (though still comedically) addresses the British class system and the notion of class conflict.

Main characters

 * Archibald Mulliner, member of the Drones Club, son of Sir Sholto and Lady Wilhelmina. A skilled chicken-impersonator, Archibald also appeared in...
 * "the shirt-sleeved man", manager and bartender at Bottleton East pub
 * "the masses", patrons at Bottleton East pub
 * "disheveled man", patron at Bottleton East pub

Plot
The story is narrated by Archibald's uncle, Mr Mulliner. It takes place in the fictional working class suburb of Bottleton East (mentioned elsewhere in ...).

...butler Meadowes, "a proponent of the Coming Revolution in which all those pampered members of the Bourgeoise, who suppressed the Martyred Proletariat, would have their blood running in rivers down the curbs of the streets where they forced the masses to reside"

"Archibald took this sympathetically. He wasn't aware of how he had suppressed the masses, but was interested in rectifying this problem."

Audio Recording
Read by Jonathan Cecil