The Velveteen Rabbit
A boy receives a gift.
There was once a velveteen rabbit. In the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, just like a rabbit should be. His coat was brown and white. He had firm whiskers jutting out from his nose, and his long ears were pink on the inside.
One Christmas morning, he sat at the top of a young boy’s stocking. With a sprig of holly between his paws, he looked quite charming.
There were other things in the stocking, too. There were treats, like nuts and oranges. Some of the nuts were covered in chocolate.
There were other toys as well, like a model train and a wind-up mouse. The train had a glossy coat of paint and wheels that spun. Turn the crank on the mouse’s back, and it would race across the floor. As wonderful as the the other toys were, the rabbit was the best of all.
For at least two hours, the boy loved him. Then aunts and uncles arrived for dinner. They brought more gifts to open. There was a great rustling of wrapping paper. 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. On occasion, he was left out on the nursery floor. Wherever he was, no one thought very much about him.
He was shy. Velvet is a plush fabric made of precious silk. Velveteen is a simple cotton fabric made to look velvet. The more expensive toys snubbed the rabbit. They didn’t usually talk to him. If they did talk to him, it was not because they valued his opinion.
The mechanical toys thought they were superior. They looked down upon everyone else. They were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, for example, never missed an opportunity of referring to his ropes and sails in technical terms. He often spoke of halyards, spars, and vangs.
The rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything. He didn’t even know that real rabbits existed. He thought all rabbits were stuffed with sawdust like he was. He knew that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.
The little rabbit felt insignificant and commonplace.
Chapter 2
The rabbit meets a wise, old horse.
The only person who was kind to the velveteen rabbit was a horse made of wood with a leather coat.
The leather horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the other toys. He was so old that his brown coat had bald patches. In these spots you could see the wood under the leather. All his seams showed, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out.
He was wise. Over the years, a long line of mechanical toys had arrived boasting and swaggering. The leather horse had met every one of them. He knew that, eventually, they all break their mainsprings and pass away. They were only toys, and they would never turn into anything else.
Nursery magic is strange and wonderful. Only those playthings that are old and wise like the leather horse understand it.
“What is REAL?” asked the rabbit one day. The two were lying side by side and waiting for Nana to come and tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a crank that sticks out?”
“It isn’t how you are made,” said the horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you after you are made. 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 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 does it happen bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the horse. “It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or people who have sharp edges. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out. You get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter. Once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are real?” said the rabbit.
Immediately, the rabbit wished he had not said that. He worried the horse might be sensitive about it, but the old leather horse only smiled.
“The boy’s uncle made me real,” he said. “That was so many years ago! Once you are real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts forever.”
The rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called ”real” happened to him. On the one hand, he longed to become real. He wanted to know what it felt like. On the other hand, the idea of growing shabby and losing his eye balls was disturbing.
He wished that he could become real without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
Chapter 3
The boy and the rabbit spend a lot of time together.
There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery.
Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings lying about. Other times, she went swooping about like a tornado and put them all away in cupboards. She called this “tidying up.” The toys all hated this, especially the metal ones.
The rabbit didn’t mind it so much. Wherever he was thrown, he came down soft.
One evening, when the boy was going to bed, he couldn’t find the porcelain dog that always slept with him. Nana was in a hurry. It was too much trouble to hunt for missing toys at bedtime.
She looked around. The toy cupboard door stood open, so she made a swoop.
“Here,” she said, “take your old bunny! He’ll do to sleep with you!” She dragged the rabbit out by one ear and put him into the boy’s arms. That night, and for many nights after, the velveteen rabbit slept in the boy’s bed.
At first, he found it rather uncomfortable. The boy hugged him very tight, and sometimes he rolled over on top of him. Other times he pushed him so far under the pillow that the rabbit could hardly breathe.
He missed the long moonlight hours in the nursery. When all the house was silent, and he used to talk with the old leather horse.
Very soon, however, he grew to like the bed. The boy would talk to him. He made tunnels for him under the bedclothes. The boy explained that these tunnels were like the burrows real rabbits lived in.
They invented splendid games together. When Nana had gone away and left the nightlight on, they would whisper back and forth. When the boy fell asleep, the rabbit would snuggle down close under his little warm chin and dream.
The boy’s hands stayed clasped close round him all night long.
As time went on, the little rabbit was very happy. He was so happy he never noticed how his beautiful velveteen fur was getting shabbier and shabbier. His tail was becoming unsewn. All the pink rubbed off his nose where the boy kissed him.
Spring came, and they spent long days outside in the garden.
Wherever the boy went, the rabbit went, too. He got rides in the wheelbarrow and ate picnics on the grass. Out behind the flowers at the edge of the yard, there was a row of raspberry bushes. Here, the boy built little huts for fairies.
One time, when the boy was called away suddenly for lunch. The rabbit was left out on the lawn until long after sunset.
That evening, Nana had to come looking for him in the dark with the candle. The boy couldn’t go to sleep without him.
The rabbit was wet through with the dew. He was muddy from diving into the burrows the boy had made for him in the flower bed. Nana grumbled. 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. He knew that what the horse had said was true at last. The nursery magic had happened to him. He was no longer a toy; he was real. The boy himself had said it.
That night he was almost too happy to sleep. So much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. In his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom and beauty.
Even Nana noticed it the next morning when she picked him up. She said, “I declare if that old bunny hasn’t got quite a knowing expression!”
Chapter 4
The velveteen rabbit meets two wild rabbits.
It was a wonderful summer!
Near the house where they lived was a forest. In the long June evenings, the boy liked to go there after diner to play. Of course, he took the velveteen rabbit with him.
He might wander off. Sometimes he went to pick flowers. Other times he invented fantasy kingdoms among the trees. Before he left to do something else, he always made a little nest for the rabbit somewhere. The rabbit was quite cozy. The kindhearted little boy liked for bunny to be comfortable.
One evening, the rabbit was lying there alone watching ants run to and fro across his paws. He saw two strange beings creep out of the tall ferns.
They were rabbits like himself, but they looked quite furry and brand-new. They must have been very well made, for their seams didn’t show at all. They changed shape in a queer way when they moved. One minute they were long and thin. The next minute fat and bunchy.
The other two were constantly changing, whereas he always stayed the same.
Their feet padded softly on the ground. They crept closer to him, twitching their noses.
The velveteen rabbit stared hard to see which side their cranks stuck out. He knew that people who jump generally have something to wind them up. But he couldn’t see it. They were evidently a new kind of rabbit altogether.
They stared at him, and the little rabbit stared back. All the time their noses twitched.
“Why don’t you get up and play with us?” one of them asked.
“I don’t feel like it,” said the Rabbit. He didn’t want to explain that he had no clockwork.
”Come on!” said the furry rabbit, “It’s easy.” He gave a big hop sideways and stood on his hind legs.
“I don’t believe he can!” said the other rabbit.
“I can, too!” he protested. “I can jump higher than anyone!” He meant when the boy threw him up in the air, but of course he didn’t say that part.
“Can you hop on your hind legs?” asked the furry rabbit.
That was a dreadful question. The velveteen rabbit had no hind legs at all! The back of him was made all in one piece, like a pincushion. He sat very still among the ferns, hoping that the two rabbits wouldn’t notice.
“I don’t want to!” he said again.
But wild rabbits have very sharp eyes. One of them stretched out his neck and looked.
“He hasn’t got any hind legs!” he called out. “Fancy a rabbit without any hind legs!” he jeered. The other rabbit began to laugh.
“I do!” cried the little rabbit. “I do have hind legs! I am sitting on them!”
“Then stretch them out and show me, like this!” said the first wild rabbit. He began to whirl round and dance. The velveteen rabbit got dizzy just looking at him.
“I don’t like dancing,” he said. “I’d rather sit still!”
In truth, he was longing to dance. A funny new tickly feeling ran through him. He would give anything in the world to be able to jump about like these rabbits did.
The wild rabbit stopped dancing. He began to approach. He came so close that his long whiskers brushed the velveteen rabbit’s ear. Then he wrinkled his nose. Suddenly he flattened his ears and jumped backwards.
“He doesn’t smell right!” he exclaimed. “He isn’t a rabbit at all! He isn’t real!”
“I am real! I am! The boy said so!” protested the little rabbit. He nearly began to cry.
Just then there was a sound of footsteps. The boy ran past. With a stamp of feet and a flash of white tails, the two strange rabbits disappeared.
“Come back and play with me!” he called. “Oh, do come back! I know I am real!”
But there was no answer, only the little ants crawling on his paws. Fern fronds swayed gently where the two strangers had left in such a hurry. The velveteen rabbit was all alone.
“Oh, dear!” he thought. “Why did they run away like that? Why couldn’t they stay and talk to me?”
For a long time, he lay very still, watching the ferns and hoping that they would come back. They never did.
The sun sank lower, and little white moths fluttered out into the night air. The boy came and carried him home.
Chapter 5
These are anxious times for the rabbit.
Weeks passed and the little rabbit grew old and shabby. Nevertheless, the boy loved him just as much as ever.
He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off. The pink color on the inside of his ears turned into grey smudges. His brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape.
He hardly even looked like a rabbit anymore, except to the boy. To him, the rabbit was always beautiful. That was all that the little rabbit cared about. He didn’t mind how he looked to other people. The nursery magic had made him real. When you are real, shabbiness doesn’t matter.
Then, one day, the boy got sick.
His face grew red in color. He talked in his sleep, but his words made no sense. His little body was so hot that it burned the rabbit when he held him close.
Strange people came and went in the nursery. A light burned all night.
The little velveteen rabbit lay there through it all, hidden from sight under the bedclothes. He never stirred. He was afraid that, if they found him, someone might take him away. He knew that the boy needed him.
It was a long weary time. The boy was too ill to play.
The little rabbit found it rather dull. There was nothing to do all day long. He snuggled down patiently and looked forward to the time when the boy would be well again. They would go out in the garden amongst the flowers and the butterflies. They would play splendid games in the raspberry bushes. He planned all sorts of delightful outings.
While the boy lay half asleep, the little rabbit crept up close to the pillow and whispered his ideas into the child's ear.
The fever turned, and the boy got better. Soon, he was able to sit up in bed and look at picture-books. The little rabbit cuddled close at his side.
One day, they let the boy get up and dress. It was a bright, sunny morning. The windows stood wide open. They wrapped the boy up in a shawl and carried him out on to the balcony.
The little rabbit lay tangled up among the bedclothes.
The boy was going to the seaside tomorrow. It was the doctor’s idea. Everything was arranged. As they talked about the trip, the little rabbit lay under the bedclothes. His head was peeping out, and he listened.
The room was to be disinfected. All the books and toys that the boy had played with in bed must be burnt.
“Hurray!” thought the little rabbit. “Tomorrow we shall go to the seaside!” The boy had often talked of his trip there. He would finally see what he had only ever heard about. He wanted very much to see the big waves coming in. There would also be tiny crabs crawling about. Of course, there would be sandcastles to build, too.
Just then Nana caught sight of him.
“How about his old bunny?” she asked.
“That?” said the doctor. “Why, it’s a mass of scarlet fever germs! Burn it at once.”
Nana started to say something, but the doctor interrupted her. “What? Nonsense!” he gasped. “Get him a new one. He mustn’t have that one anymore!”
Chapter 6
The rabbit meets a fairy.
So, the little rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of trash. They carried the sack outside and threw it behind the henhouse.
That was a fine place to make a bonfire, but the gardener was too busy to attend to it just then. He had the potatoes to dig. There were green peas to gather. He promised to come in early the next morning and burn the whole lot.
That night the boy slept in a different bedroom. He had a new bunny to sleep with him. It was splendid with soft white fur and glass eyes.
The boy was too excited to care very much about it. He was going to the seaside the next day. That was such a wonderful thing that he could think of nothing else.
While the boy slept dreaming of the seaside, the little rabbit lay among the old picture-books in a sack behind the henhouse. He felt very lonely. The sack had been left untied. By wriggling a bit, he was able to get his head through the opening and look out.
The night air was chilly. He had become used to sleeping in a proper bed. His coat had worn thin and threadbare from all the hugging. It provided no warmth.
Nearby he could see the row of raspberry bushes. They grew tall and close together like a tropical jungle. He had played there with the boy so many times. He thought of all those long sunlit hours in the garden. How happy they were then!
A great sadness came over him. He saw every hour they spent together pass before him. Each memory was more beautiful than the next: the fairy huts behind the flowerbed, the quiet evenings when he lay in the ferns, the little ants crawling over his paws, that wonderful day when he first knew that he was real.
He thought of the leather horse, and all that he had told him. He was so wise and gentle. He wished they could talk together now.
Of what use was it? Why be loved, lose one’s beauty, and become real, if it all ended like this?
A tear, a real tear, trickled down his shabby velveteen nose and fell to the ground. Then a strange thing happened. Where the tear had fallen, a flower grew out of the ground.
This was a mysterious flower, not at all like any that grew in the garden. It had slender green leaves the color of emeralds. In the center of the leaves was a blossom like a golden cup. It was so beautiful that the little rabbit forgot to cry. He just lay there watching it.
The blossom opened, and a fairy stepped out.
She was the loveliest fairy in the whole world. Her dress was made of pearls and dewdrops. There were flowers round her neck and in her hair. Her face was like the most perfect flower of all.
She came close to the little rabbit and gathered him up in her arms. She kissed him on his nose that was all damp from crying.
“Little rabbit,” she said, “don’t you know who I am?”
The rabbit looked up at her. It seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn’t think where.
“I am the fairy of nursery magic,” she said. “I take care of all the playthings that children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don’t need them anymore, I come and take them away with me to turn them real.”
“Wasn’t I real before?” asked the little rabbit.
“You were real to the boy,” the fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be real to everyone.”
She held the little rabbit close in her arms. Then she flew away with him into the forest.
Chapter 7
The rabbit meets new friends.
There was light now because the moon had risen. All the forest was beautiful. The fern fronds shone like frosted silver.
In an open glade between tree trunks, wild rabbits danced with their shadows. When they saw the fairy, they all stopped dancing and stood round in a ring staring at her.
“I’ve brought you a new playfellow,” the fairy said. “You must be very kind to him and teach him all he needs to know about Rabbit-land. He is going to live with you for ever and ever!”
She kissed him again and put him down on the grass. “Run and play, little rabbit!” she said.
The little rabbit sat quite still for a moment and did not move. When he saw all the wild rabbits dancing around him, he suddenly remembered about his hind legs. He didn’t want them to see how he was made all in one piece.
He didn’t know that, when the fairy kissed him that last time, she had changed him altogether.
He might have sat there a long time, too shy to move, if just then something hadn’t tickled his nose. Before he thought about what he was doing, he lifted his hind leg to scratch his nose with his toe.
That is how he learned that he actually had hind legs!
Instead of dingy velveteen, he had a brown fur coat. It was soft and shiny. His ears twitched by themselves. His whiskers were so long that they brushed the grass.
He gave a mighty leap. The joy of using those hind legs was so great that he went springing about the turf. He was jumping sideways and whirling round as the others did. It was exhilarating.
When at last he stopped to look for the fairy, she had gone. He was a real rabbit at last, at home with the other rabbits.
Chapter 8
The rabbit visits someone special.
Autumn passed, and winter, too. In the spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the boy went out to play in the forest behind the house.
While he was playing, two rabbits crept out from behind the ferns and peeped at him.
One of them was brown all over. The other had strange markings under his fur. It was as though long ago he had been spotted but all the spots had worn off. There was something familiar about his little soft nose and his round black eyes.
The boy thought to himself, “Why, he looks just like my old bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!”
He never knew that it really was his own bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be real.