Rabbits!

Peter Rabbit’s overconfident young cousin comes knocking

The Tale of Benjamin Bunny by Beatrix Potter

In this story, the events of Peter Rabbit have already taken place. They’re canon. But they’re an unhappy canon, and Peter Rabbit is a diminished version of his former self.

As you’ll remember, Peter Rabbit got away with his life (and avoided an afterlife of employment in the making and eventual eating of a pie). The running rabbit scaling fences and fleeing as hard as possible away from McGregor, the farmer, who did not like rabbits scarpering in and out of his land and eating all his produce.

I think we, as people, can sympathise with McGregor. He wants to grow things, after all; and the rabbits, though entertaining and sweet, are an impediment. But so, too, can we sympathise with Peter Rabbit. He’s young; and all of us were once young. And he wants to get out and to explore and to have adventures. Some of us, perhaps most of us, were once like that.

But the Peter that we encounter here is a figure in decline. He has not got his blue coat and his shoes; they were lost in the struggle, lost in the flight from McGregor’s. And now, small though they are, they’re the adornment for a very minute scarecrow, set up by McGregor as a taunt. Though how many crows could possibly be scared by a scarecrow the size of a juvenile rabbit? I really don’t imagine it would be many.

Anyway, Peter still lost all his things and his mood has taken a downward trend. He’s been given a pocket handkerchief to wear instead of his coat and shoes, and essentially, he’s shivering out in the cold trying to wrap himself up as best as he can.

Perhaps this is a dose of pathos for poor Peter.

That is until another young rabbit, again with big ideas, arrives and decides to have another crack at the McGregor crib. This one is called Benjamin Bunny (quite a good name) and he is as impetuous as Peter used to be, without any of the interjection of what we might call life and life experience. He’s full of news about McGregor and McGregor’s wife. The two of them travelled out of their home into town, avec a horse and cart, Benjamin Bunny says. And Mrs McGregor was wearing her best bonnet. Surely the sign that they plan to be out all day.

Peter is unconvinced, and continues in his own way to sulk. But Benjamin is insistent. The hated and feared McGregors are gone. Now’s the chance to get all of your stuff back. Are you coming with me or aren’t you?

The other little rabbits, as it happens, were not doing anything quite so dangerous. They were at home, doing this and that: odd jobs for the family. And Mrs Rabbit, Peter’s mother, had all her usual tasks to perform. She had things to cultivate, things to buy, things to make do and mend. (One pleasant little piece of world-building, a term annoying people like to use, appears here. Rabbits have such a thing as rabbit tobacco. But of course the real plant would scorch their little lungs, as well as being generally unpleasant. So what is rabbit tobacco? It’s lavender, of course. That’s something I rather like.)

Anyway, Peter and Benjamin are finally decided to go into McGregor’s patch, and Benjamin has a lot to tell Peter. He’s the new rabbit on the block and thinks he has improved upon Peter’s old and clumsy ways.

No one who’s anyone, Benjamin says, goes into McGregor’s farm the way you used to do. No, no, no! Instead, we shall traverse a route of my own divining. See, just like that.

And the two of them enter McGregor’s field, Benjamin Bunny using his shoes to make nice foot-marks, rabbit-sized, in McGregor’s nice clean, new-dug beds.

Peter is unhappy. He is unsure that the McGregors ever actually left and he keeps hearing the phantom sounds of their coming back. Every moment that, for instance, Benjamin is using to nibble cabbages and to swipe onions, Peter is fretting and wondering about turning for home.

But at least he simply has to go back for his coat and his shoes, and the two of them approach the scarecrow. Peter’s coat and shoes are both there: the shoes filled with water, the coat a little shrunken by the rain. Peter pulls the coat on and, after tipping out the water, puts on his shoes. Benjamin suggests, with the cockiness of youth, that they use the old pocket handkerchief to tie up some onions and take them home. Unhappily, and trailing the bindle behind him as he goes, Peter agrees.

They get quite around the houses, and quite around the farm, the two of them, when they realise that McGregor’s land is not exactly abandoned; and that all is not quiet on the western front.

They’d forgotten, as little rabbits are apt to do, about the cat.

One small note to conclude.

I like rabbits. And I think I always have. I like seeing them in nature, if ever I’m in nature. I like seeing friendly young rabbits for sale in pet shops. I like seeing them sleeping in heaps and I like seeing them move about energetically. I liked the rabbit my family had once, when I was a boy. He was a very good rabbit. I loved him very much.