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 everyone 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out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.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 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 happen often 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."
--excerpt from: The Velveteen Rabbit, 1922 by Margery Williams
