##Stories & Poems
The Velveteen Rabbit
from The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real by Margery Williams
There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really
splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was
spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were
lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the
top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the
effect was charming.
There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy
engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was
quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and
then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of
tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking
at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.
For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor,
and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being
only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed
him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every
one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real.
The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his
paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of
referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim
to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed;
he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he
understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be
mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who
was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views,
put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them
all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant
and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the
Skin Horse.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others.
He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the
seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out
to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession
of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break
their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys,
and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very
strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise
and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by
side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does
it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.
“It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long,
long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become
Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you
are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by
bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.
“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to
people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be
carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair
has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the
joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because
once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t
understand.”
“I suppose you are Real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had
not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the
Skin Horse only smiled.
“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years
ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for
always.”
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic
called Real happened to him. He
longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of
growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He
wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things
happening to him.
There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took
no notice of the playthings lying about, and sometimes, for no reason
whatever, she went swooping about like a great wind and hustled them
away in cupboards. She called this “tidying up,” and the playthings all
hated it, especially the tin ones. The
Rabbit didn’t mind it so much, for wherever he was thrown he came down
soft.
One evening, when the Boy was going to bed, he couldn’t find the china
dog that always slept with him. Nana was in a hurry, and it was too much
trouble to hunt for china dogs at bedtime, so she simply looked about
her, and seeing that the toy cupboard door stood open, she made a swoop.
“Here,” she said, “take your old Bunny! He’ll do to sleep with you!” And
she dragged the Rabbit out by one ear, and put him into the Boy’s arms.
That night, and for many night after, the Velveteen Rabbit slept in the
Boy’s bed. At first he found it rather uncomfortable, for the Boy hugged
him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on him, and sometimes he
pushed him so far under the pillow that the Rabbit could scarcely
breathe. And he missed, too, those long moonlight hours in the nursery,
when all the house was silent, and his talks with the Skin Horse. But
very soon he grew to like it, for the Boy used to talk to him, and made
nice tunnels for him under the bedclothes that he said were like the
burrows the real rabbits lived in. And they had splendid games together,
in whispers, when
Nana had gone away to her supper and left the night light burning on the
mantelpiece. And when the Boy dropped off to sleep, the Rabbit would
snuggle down close under his little warm chin and dream, with the Boy’s
hands clasped close round him all night long.
And so time went on, and the little Rabbit was very happy—so happy
that he never noticed how his beautiful velveteen fur was getting
shabbier and shabbier, and his tail coming unsewn, and all the pink
rubbed off his nose where the Boy had kissed him.
Spring came, and they had long days in the garden,
for wherever the Boy went the Rabbit went too. He had rides in the
wheelbarrow, and picnics on the grass, and lovely fairy huts built for
him under the raspberry canes behind the flower border. And once, when
the Boy was called away suddenly to go out to tea, the Rabbit was left
out on the lawn until long after dusk, and Nana had
Boy couldn’t go to sleep unless he was there. He was wet through with
the dew and quite earthy from diving into the burrows the Boy had made
for him in the flower bed, and Nana grumbled as she rubbed him off
with a corner of her apron.“You must have your old Bunny!” she said. “Fancy all that fuss for a
toy!”The Boy sat up in bed and stretched out his hands.
“Give me my Bunny!” he said. “You mustn’t say that. He isn’t a toy. He’s
REAL!”
When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy, for he knew that what
the Skin Horse had said was true at last. The nursery magic had happened
to him, and he was a toy no longer. He was Real. The Boy himself had
said it.
That night he was almost too happy to sleep, and so much love stirred in
his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. And into his boot-button
eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom
and beauty, so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked
him up, and said, “I declare if that old Bunny hasn’t got quite a
knowing expression!”
The little Rabbit is now real to the boy, but a great deal more happens
to him before he truly becomes real—as you will discover when you
read the rest of The Velveteen Rabbit. And if you liked this story,
you will also like Theodore by Edward Ormondroyd, which is about an
old teddy bear and the little girl who loves him.
