Collier's Weekly''. Written in the manner of
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.
Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...
's fairy tales, the story features but two characters: an unnamed "little man", and his mother. The mother has made "a beautiful suit of clothes" for the man, who takes inordinate delight in this possession.
Plot summary
Though he longs to "wear it everywhere", the little man's mother insists that he may wear his suit only "on rare and great occasions. It was his wedding-suit, she said." She covers up various parts (buttons, cuffs, elbows, "and wherever the suit was most likely to come to harm") to protect them. The little man wears it as such to church, but he is "full" of the "wild desire" to wear it free of "all these restrictions his mother set."
One evening the uncommon quality of the moonlight inspires him, "terribly afraid, but glad, glad", to put on his suit without any of its protections. He opens his bedroom window and climbs "down to the garden path below." There, in a "night warmer than any night had ever been" and in a strangely exalted natural setting, he walks through the plants (some of them night-blooming and fragrant);
night stock,
nicotine
Nicotine is a natural product, naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants (most predominantly in tobacco and ''Duboisia hopwoodii'') and is widely used recreational drug use, recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As ...
,
white mallow,
southern-wood,
lavender, and
mignonette are mentioned. He goes through "the great hedge", regardless of "the thorns of the brambles" and "
bur
A bur (also spelled burr) is a seed or dry fruit or infructescence that has hooks or teeth. The main function of the bur is to spread the seeds of the bur plant, often through epizoochory. The hooks of the bur are used to catch on to for exam ...
s and
goosegrass
Goosegrass (sometimes goose grass) is a common name for several grasses, sedges, and annual herbs. The origin of the name is due either to a plant's use as food for geese or plant parts that look like the foot of a goose.
Goosegrass may refer to: ...
and
havers" because "he knew it was all part of the wearing for which he had longed." He even wades "to his shoulders" through "the duck-pond, or at least . . . what was the duck-pond by day." Reaching the "high-road", and is a joined by a "dim moth" that comes closer and closer, "until at last its velvet wings just brushed his lips...." The next morning the little man is found "dead, with his neck broken, in the bottom of the stone pit", but wearing "a face of such happiness that, had you seen it, you would have understood indeed how that he had died happy, never knowing that cool and streaming silver for the
duckweed
Lemnoideae is a subfamily of flowering aquatic plants, known as duckweeds, water lentils, or water lenses. They float on or just beneath the surface of still or slow-moving bodies of fresh water and wetlands. Also known as bayroot, they arose ...
in the pond."
[H. G. Wells, "The Beautiful Suit", in ''The Short Stories of H. G. Wells'' (London: Ernest Benn, 1927), pp. 139–43.]
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Beautiful Suit, The
British short stories
Short stories by H. G. Wells
1909 short stories