The Velveteen Rabbit

This story comes to us from a book by Margery Williams, which bears the alternate title “How Toys Become Real.” It is interesting to think about how many stories there are out there that concern toys becoming real. It seems that as long as children have played with toys, they have fantasized about their being really alive. From Colloddi’s Pinocchio to Milne’s Winnie the Pooh all the way through to Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes and the phenomenally successful Toy Story films of Pixar. Only a few months ago, I shared a story of live toys (and a certain penguin of which I know of) with you all. What sets this story apart from so many of these others is that, in this story, the titular rabbit is destined to become real not merely a living toy.

Velveteen, before you ask, is a kind of fabric usually made from cotton which is designed to look and feel somewhat like velvet. It was this material that a toymaker once used to make a lovely little rabbit which was bought by a nice lady and subsequently given to her son as a Christmas gift. The boy was very happy and absolutely loved his new Velveteen Rabbit…for about two hours. By then, he had unwrapped other gifts. Clockwork trains, electric soldiers, and the very latest in video games: 8-Bit graphics and everything!

Okay, that last one’s not right, but I think you get the idea. The rabbit was just velveteen stuffed with sawdust, he didn’t make a noise or move on his own or light up or anything. So, after the Christmas festivities were over, the rabbit was tossed carelessly into the toy chest with all the other toys the boy hardly ever played with but would throw a tantrum if you even suggested giving them away.

Of course, the other toys looked down on the rabbit for being so old-fashioned. They had moving parts and wind-up keys and could move and walk and talk. Some of the fancier toys even pretended to be real.

“And look at you,” said one particularly nasty toy boat. “Have you ever even seen a real rabbit?”

“Real rabbit?” asked our velveteen friend. “What is that?”

“Sort of like you,” said a kind voice from outside the chest. “Only very, very different.” The Velveteen Rabbit looked out of the chest and saw that he was being addressed by a rocking horse, who was perhaps the oldest toy in the room and was very kind and clever. “Don’t let those fancy toys get to you,” he said with a friendly smile. “I’ve seen hundreds of toys come and go in this place. They’re top of the heap one day and the maid is picking up their gears and springs the next.”

“What is real?” asked the Rabbit.

“Not like those toys, I can tell you that. It’s difficult to explain, but when you are real you can move and think on your own. You can live and breathe and eat just like live animals do. There are no toy chests if you’re real, no little boys poking and pawing at you. It means you’re alive and that’s the best thing to be.”

The Velveteen Rabbit wasn’t sure he understood the Rocking Horse’s words, but they did excite him. He thought he’d like to try being real. “How can I be real?” he asked.

“For toys, it’s not easy. It takes love. The love of a child. And I mean a great love. You must be real in his eyes, and then you’ll be real in everyone’s eyes.”

“You’re crazy!” chimed in a toy car. “That’s just an old toys’ tale. Toys don’t become real. We’re built, we’re played with, we wear out, we’re thrown away. That’s the best any of us can hope for!”

Now the Velveteen Rabbit was very confused and he didn’t know who to believe.

The next night, the boy was throwing a fit because he had lost his china dog. This was a little toy dog that he always took to bed with him and he couldn’t sleep without it. The woman called “Nanny” didn’t know what had become of the dog but knew she had to get the boy to sleep soon. So she looked through the toy chest and there she found the Velveteen Rabbit. “Here,” she said. “Remember your bunny? I’m sure he’d like to spend the night with you.”

The boy was hesitant at first, but he gave in eventually and from then on, it was not the china dog, but the Velveteen Rabbit the boy called for when bedtime came. Of course, the fancy, wind-up, clockwork, electric, etcetera toys were shocked and appalled at the Rabbit becoming the boy’s favorite toy, but the Rocking Horse was very proud of his little friend. “You may turn real yet,” he said one night.

But in the meantime, the Rabbit was having so much fun playing with the boy that he hadn’t noticed he was changing. His pretty brown coat was getting duller and shabbier. The pink paint from his nose was almost rubbed off. A few of his seams were getting loose and stuffing began to peek out. He was beginning to wear out, just as the toy car had said he would. One day, the boy had been playing with the Rabbit out in the garden and left him there, so when bedtime came, Nanny had to go get him, clean him off (as best she could) and hand him to the boy.

“I don’t see why you make such a fuss over this toy,” she said as she handed the Rabbit over.

“He’s not a toy!” insisted the boy. “He’s real!”

Real? Thought the Rabbit to himself. Am I real? The boy said so, and the Rocking Horse did say that a child’s love could make me real. If he says I’m real…I must be! I’m real!

That summer, when he and the boy were playing as they always did, the Rabbit found himself left temporarily alone on the lawn. As he sat there, patiently waiting for the boy to return, two very strange creatures hopped over to him. The Velveteen Rabbit didn’t know what they were, but they were, in fact, rabbits. Real rabbits. They stared at the Velveteen Rabbit, who stared back at them, trying to figure out where the wind-up key was.

“Hello,” said the rabbits.

“Hello,” said the Rabbit.

“Would you like to run and play with us?”

“I can’t until my boy comes back.”

“Can’t you move on your own?”

“No. Why can you?”

“Certainly. Because we are real rabbits, whereas you are just a toy rabbit.”

The Velveteen Rabbit was taken aback. “But…but the boy said…he said I was real.”

“Well, look,” said the rabbits patiently, “this is very easy to settle. Can you jump?”

“Not unless the boy tosses me in the air.”

“Can you run?”

“Not unless the boy is holding me.”

“Can you wiggle your nose?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never tried.” He tried. “No, I can’t.”

“Then, I’m sorry, but you’re not a real rabbit like us.” And with that, the rabbits hopped away as the boy came back to play with his now crestfallen toy.

The boy went on loving the Velveteen Rabbit for quite some time. He loved him so hard that he was now quite worn out. He was more gray than brown, he had been repaired by Nanny seven or eight times, and his stuffing was so bent out of shape that he hardly even looked like a rabbit anymore, except to the eyes of the boy, and that’s all that mattered to the Rabbit. No matter what anybody else said, the boy said he was real so real he must be…but that’s when the boy got sick. Very sick.

The Velveteen Rabbit heard snatches of grown-up conversation. Words like “fever” and “scarlet” and “deathly ill.” It was decided that the boy would be taken to the sea-side for some fresh air. But on the day he left, something terrible happened: He left the Velveteen Rabbit behind. And once the boy was well out of the house, in came Nanny and a few maids, all wearing white handkerchiefs over their mouths.

“Okay, you heard the doctor. Everything must be destroyed so the virus can’t spread.” The Velveteen Rabbit, unable to move, watched as they gathered up the boy’s clothes, his bedsheets, his blankets…and his toys! “That rabbit especially,” said Nanny. “He played with that thing morning, noon and night. It must be infected.”

And so the Rabbit, along with many of the boy’s other possessions, were taken outside, far from the house and thrown onto a big pile. Some kind of smelly liquid was poured over it all and then the matches were struck and the fire set.

This is it, thought the Velveteen Rabbit. The toy car was right all along. I was made, played with, I wore out and now I must be destroyed. I shall never be the real rabbit I was when the boy held me close. And as he thought about his horrible fate, a most remarkable thing happened: A single tear, a real tear, rolled down the Rabbit’s cheek and onto the earth below. Suddenly, he couldn’t feel the heat from the flames. And all he could see was a bright, white light, that seemed to be surrounding him. A moment later, he felt that he was not on the bonfire after all, but in a warm, safe place, like when his boy used to cuddle him at night. He didn’t feel quite so shabby anymore, either…

When the next springtime came, the boy went out to play. His scarlet fever was quite gone and he carried with him a fine, new toy rabbit he had been given when he was sick. As he was playing, he saw two real rabbits, one of which looked like any old ordinary brown rabbit. The other, however, looked…familiar.

“That looks just like my old velveteen rabbit,” the boy said. “The one I lost when I got sick.”

The Rabbit smiled in his heart as he looked at the new toy rabbit being held by the boy who had helped bring him to life. But that was the last he ever saw of the boy. He went off with the other real rabbits like himself, and lived very happily ever after.

THE END

NEXT WEEK: "Prince Darling"

The Ghost and the Girl

This story is based on the ghost stories of Ireland, the land of the Banshee, changelings and other supernatural spectres you wouldn’t expect to come from the same place as leprechauns and tin whistles. The main plot is from “The Fate of Frank M’Kenna” by William Carleton, but I have lengthened it and changed small details. One thing I really wanted to convey was the idea that it’s not the ghosts of our dearly departed who need to move on: It’s us. We keep the dead on earth because we can’t let them go. We try to keep them alive for our own selfish reasons and deny them the reward they deserve. I’m not saying we should just erase your dead friends and family from our minds, but, as this story shows, by dwelling on death, we risk missing out on life.

M’Kenna had two sons. The oldest, Tom, was a good boy, clever, hard-working, obedient, and the greatest pride of his father’s life. The youngest, Frank, was willful, defiant, independent and the greatest shame of his father’s life. He refused to go to church, shirked his chores and did pretty much whatever he wanted regardless of his father’s words. Finally, one winter’s morning, Frank had planned to go hunting hares in the woods with a few friends. This, for Frank’s father, was the last straw. “If you don’t come with me and your brother to church, then I hope you never come back again!”

He didn’t mean it, really, it was said in anger, but it still hurt Frank’s feelings. “Whether I come back or not,” he said, “I am going. Now!” And he took up his walking stick and made his way to the forest. Frank’s father instantly regretted what he had said, but he let the boy go and he and Tom went to church.

Frank and his friends spent most of the day pursuing a particularly tricky hare who kept leading them deeper and deeper into the woods. As time wore on, it began to snow. Soon it turned into a blizzard. A terrible snowstorm, the worst seen in years. Frank’s friends wanted to go home at once to avoid getting lost in the woods. But Frank, still seething from what his father had said, was determined to catch that hare after all the trouble it had put them through. His friends tried very hard to convince him, but in the end, they had to give up and run home, leaving Frank alone in the storm.

Frank didn’t come home the next morning, and his father and Tom organized a search of the woods. It was difficult as the ground was covered in a good foot and a half of snow, but the people of the village searched high and low through those woods only to find no trace of Frank. They set out again the next day and the day after that, as the weather got warmer and the snow began to dissipate. On the fourth day after his departure from his father’s house, Frank was found. The snow had melted to reveal his body, lying curled on the cold earth, frozen to death.

There was a house very near where the body was found, owned by a man named Daly, and his own front door was taken off its hinges and used to carry Frank’s body back to town. The funeral procession was a sad one, M’Kenna and Tom sobbing the loudest and begging God and Frank to forgive them their harsh words toward the boy. The body was dressed in Frank’s finest clothes (except for the trousers; they couldn’t find his Sunday trousers, so they had to make do with another pair) and laid to rest in the earth.

It happened that Daly had a daughter of about fourteen who lived in the small house with him and who had, without her father’s knowledge, seen the young man’s corpse being carried away. The night after the funeral, Rose, for that was the girl’s name, woke her father with a terrible scream. When Daly went to see what was the matter, Rose swore that she had seen Frank M’Kenna standing in her room. Daly searched the house and saw no trace of the boy and assured his daughter that Frank was gone to his rest. Rose agreed and went back to sleep.

But the very next night, Frank appeared again. Another scream, another search of the house, another return to sleep for father and daughter. This happened every night for many days. Soon, Rose learned not to scream and instead simply covered her head in the bed sheets, only to find Frank gone when she looked out again. The nights wore on and Rose actually got used to Frank’s visits. So much so that, about a fortnight after his first appearance, she actually dared to speak to him.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Why are you haunting this house?”

“This house was my Cóiste Bodhar[1],” said the ghost of Frank M’Kenna. “The door bore me to my final rest. I have business on earth that I must complete before I can move on.”

“What is it?”

“My Sunday trousers. It might seem like a small thing, but it is important to me. My friends took them before my body was dressed for my funeral and have since been fighting over who gets to keep them. None of them may keep them. If I was not buried in them, they must be given to charity.”

The next day, Rose told the villagers what Frank’s ghost had told her. Indeed, she was correct. Frank’s friends had been fighting over the trousers, but, after Rose’s testimony, they were promptly donated to the local parrish. The people were astounded by this news of Frank’s visitation. And all the rest of that day, it was all anyone talked or thought about. And that night, Frank appeared to Rose again, and she told him that his wishes had been fulfilled.

“Thank you, Rose,” said Frank. “Now perhaps I can go to my rest.”

But, curiously enough, he did not. That night he and Rose went on talking for a while before he vanished. She told everyone of their conversation and, once again, the ghost of Frank M’Kenna was all anyone was thinking about all that day. He appeared again and again in this way and he and Rose talked on all sorts of interesting subjects. God, Heaven, angels and so on. Rose learned more about the life after this one than any living human being has ever known. And every day she hungered for her meetings with Frank and every night she reveled in them.

It is said that we often hurt the ones we love and that’s precisely what Rose was doing. After many, many visits and many, many talks, Frank felt bold enough to ask Rose for a request.

“Of course, Frank,” she said, for she was quite fond of him by this time. “Anything you like.”

“You must forget about me.”

“What?”

“I told you when we met that I had business with the living that needed to be finished before I could move on, and that was true. But now something else is keeping me bound to this plane.”

“What’s that?”

“You. You keep me here. Every day you wait for me to appear. You long for the wisdom from beyond the grave which I grant you. And when a living soul clings too tightly to the memory of one who is deceased, it prevents that spirit from moving on.”

“But, seeing you is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“You are very young, Rose. Too young to dwell on death. There is so much wonder in this world, and we only get to know it for a short while. Let me go, Rose. Live your own life.”

A tear rolled down Rose’s cheek. “I’ll miss you, Frank.”

“Don’t be sad, Rose. We’ll see each other again. But hopefully not for a very long time.”

Rose smiled in spite of her sadness. She lowered her head and closed her eyes and whispered “goodbye.” When she looked up again Frank was gone.

That was the last time Rose ever saw Frank. She stopped looking forward to his visits and occupied herself with other pursuits. Frank left this world for good and all, but Rose didn’t quite keep her promise: She never forgot Frank entirely. And let’s hope none of us ever forget the wisdom he passed on: There is so much wonder in this world, and we only get to know it for a short while. 

So know it well.

THE END

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[1]  Pronounced “KOE-shta-BOW-er,” meaning  “Death Coach.”