Read "Amaryllis at the Fair" by Richard Jefferies online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
By no possible means could Alere Flamma work himself into a dress coat. The clubs, the houses of the great, the mutual admiration dinners -- those great institutions of the day -- were all closed to him because of the Dress Coat.
If he had really desired to enter, of course he would have squeezed into the evening monkey-skin somehow; but, in truth, Alere did not want to enter.