D. H. Lawrence: Rabbit in the House

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Young Hare: Albrecht Dürer, 1502, watercolour and gouache on paper, 251 x 226 mm (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna)

   When we were children our father often worked on the night-shift. Once it was spring-time, and he used to arrive home, black and tired, just as we were downstairs in our night-dresses. Then night met morning face to face, and the contact was not always happy. Perhaps it was painful to my father to see us gaily entering upon the day into which he dragged himself soiled and weary. He didn't like going to bed in the spring morning sunshine.

    But sometimes he was happy, because of his long walk through the dewy fields in the first daybreak. He loved the open morning, the crystal and the space, after a night down pit. He watched every bird, every stir in the trembling grass, answered the whinneying of the pee-wits and tweeted to the wrens. If he could, he also would have whinnied and tweeted and whistled, in a native language that was not human. He liked non-human things best.

    One sunny morning we were all sitting at table when we heard his heavy slurring walk up the entry. We became uneasy. His was always a disturbing presence, trammeling. He passed the window darkly, and we heard him go into the scullery and put down his tin bottle. But directly he came into the kitchen. We felt at once that he had something to communicate. No one spoke. We watched his black face for a second.

    "Give me a drink," he said.

    My mother hastily poured out his tea. He went to pour it out into the saucer. But instead of drinking, he suddenly put something on the table, among the tea-cups. A tiny brown rabbit! A small rabbit, a mere morsel, sitting against the bread as still as if it were a made thing.

    "A rabbit! A young one! Who gave it you, father?"

    But he laughed enigmatically, with a sliding motion of his yellow-grey eyes, and went to take off his coat. We pounced on the rabbit.

    "Is it alive? Can you feel its heart beat?"

    My father came back and sat down heavily in his arm-chair. He dragged his saucer to him, and blew his tea, pushing out his red lips under his black moustache.

    "Where did you get it, father?"

    "I picked it up," he said, wiping his naked forearm over his mouth and beard.

    "Where?"

    "Is it a wild one?" came my mother's quick voice.

    "Yes, it is."

    "Then why did you bring it?" cried my mother.

    "Oh, we wanted it," came our cry.

    "Yes, I've no doubt you did -- " retorted my mother. But she was drowned in our clamour of questions.

    On the field path, my father had found a dead mother rabbit and three dead little ones -- this one alive, but unmoving.

    "But what had killed them, Daddy?"

    "I couldn't say, my child. I s'd think she'd eaten something."

    "Why did you bring it!" again my mother's voice of condemnation. "You know what it will be."

    My father made no answer, but we were loud in protest.

    "He must bring it. It's not big enough to live by itself. It would die," we shouted.

    "Yes, and it will die now. And then there'll be another outcry."

    My mother set her face against the tragedy of dead pets. Our hearts sank.

    "It won't die, father, will it? Why will it? It won't."

    "I s'd think not," said my father.

    "You know well enough it will. Haven't we had it all before -- !" said my mother.

    "They dunna always pine," replied my father testily.

    But my mother reminded him of other little wild animals he had brought, which had sulked and refused to live, and brought storms of tears and trouble in our house of lunatics.

    Trouble fell on us. The little rabbit sat on our lap, unmoving, its eye wide and dark. We brought it milk, warm milk, and held it to its nose. It sat as still as if it was far away, retreated down some deep burrow, hidden, oblivious. We wetted its mouth and whiskers with drops of milk. It gave no sign, did not even shake off the wet white drops. Somebody began to shed a few secret tears.

    "What did I say?" cried my mother. "Take it and put it down the field."

    Her command was in vain. We were driven to get dressed for school. There sat the rabbit. It was like a tiny obscure cloud. Watching it, the emotions died out of our breast. Useless to love it, to yearn over it. Its little feelings were all ambushed. They must be circumvented. Love and affection were a trespass upon it. A little wild thing, it became more mute and asphyxiated still in its own arrest, when we approached with love. We must not love it. We must circumvent it, for its own existence.

    So I passed the order to my sister and my mother. The rabbit was not to be spoken to, nor even looked at. Wrapping it in a piece of flannel, I put it in an obscure corner of the cold parlour, and put a saucer of milk before its nose. My mother was forbidden to enter the parlour whilst we were at school.

    "As if I should take any notice of your nonsense," she cried, affronted. Yet I doubt if she ventured into that parlour.

    At midday, after school, creeping into the front room, there we saw the rabbit still and unmoving in the piece of flannel. Strange grey-brown neutralization of life, still living! It was a sore problem to us.

    "Why won't it drink its milk, mother?" we whispered. Our father was asleep.

    "It prefers to sulk its life away, silly little thing." A profound problem. Prefers to sulk its life away! We put young dandelion leaves to its nose. The sphinx was not more oblivious.

    At tea-time, however, it had hopped a few inches, out of its flannel, and there it sat again, uncovered, a little solid cloud of muteness, brown, with unmoving whiskers. Only its side palpitated slightly with life.

    Darkness came, my father set off to work. The rabbit was still unmoving. Dumb despair was coming over the sisters, a threat of tears before bedtime. Clouds of my mother's anger gathered, as she muttered against my father's wantonness.

    Once more the rabbit was wrapped in the old pit-singlet. But now it was carried into the scullery and put under the copper fire- place, that it might think itself inside a burrow. The saucers were placed about, four or five, here and there on the floor, so that if the little creature should chance to hop abroad, it could not fail to come upon some food. After this my mother was allowed to take from the scullery what she wanted and then she was forbidden to open the door.

    When morning came, and it was light, I went downstairs. Opening the scullery door I heard a slight scuffle. Then I saw dabbles of milk all over the floor and tiny rabbit-droppings in the saucers. And there the miscreant, the tips of his ears showing behind a pair of boots. I peeped at him. He sat bright-eyed and askance, twitching his nose and looking at me while not looking at me.

    He was alive -- very much alive. But still we were afraid to trespass much on his confidence.

    "Father!" My father was arrested at the door. "Father, the rabbit's alive."

    "Back your life it is," said my father.

    "Mind how you go in."

    By evening, however, the little creature was tame, quite tame. He was christened Adolf. We were enchanted by him. We couldn't really love him, because he was wild and loveless to the end. But he was an unmixed delight.

    We decided he was too small to live in a hutch -- he must live at large in the house. My mother protested, but in vain. He was so tiny. So we had him upstairs, and he dropped his tiny pills on the bed and we were enchanted.

    Adolf made himself instantly at home. He had the run of the house, and was perfectly happy, with his tunnels and his holes behind the furniture.

    We loved him to take meals with us. He would sit on the table humping his back, sipping his milk, shaking his whiskers and his tender ears, hopping off and hobbling back to his saucer, with an air of supreme unconcern. Suddenly he was alert. He hobbled a few tiny paces, and reared himself up inquisitively at the sugar-basin. He fluttered his tiny fore-paws, and then reached and laid them on the edge of the basin, whilst he craned his thin neck and peeped in. He trembled his whiskers at the sugar, then did his best to lift down a lump.

    "Do you think I will have it! Animals in the sugar pot!" cried my mother, with a rap of her hand on the table.

    Which so delighted the electric Adolf that he flung his hind- quarters and knocked over a cup.

    "It's your own fault, mother. If you left him alone -- "

    He continued to take tea with us. He rather liked warm tea. And he loved sugar. Having nibbled a lump, he would turn to the butter. There he was shooed off by our parent. He soon learned to treat her shooing with indifference. Still, she hated him to put his nose in the food. And he loved to do it. And so one day between them they overturned the cream-jug. Adolf deluged his little chest, bounced back in terror, was seized by his little ears by my mother and bounced down on the hearth-rug. There he shivered in momentary discomfort, and suddenly set off in a wild flight to the parlour.

    This last was his happy hunting ground. He had cultivated the bad habit of pensively nibbling certain bits of cloth in the hearth-rug. When chased from this pasture, he would retreat under the sofa. There he would twinkle in Buddhist meditation until suddenly, no one knew why, he would go off like an alarum clock. With a sudden bumping scuffle he would whirl out of the room, going through the doorway with his little ears flying. Then we would hear his thunder-bolt hurtling in the parlour, but before we could follow, the wild streak of Adolf would flash past us, on an electric wind that swept him round the scullery and carried him back, a little mad thing, flying possessed like a ball round the parlour. After which ebullition he would sit in a corner composed and distant, twitching his whiskers in abstract meditation. And it was in vain we questioned him about his outbursts. He just went off like a gun, and was as calm after it as a gun that smokes placidly.

    Alas, he grew up rapidly. It was almost impossible to keep him from the outer door.

    One day, as we were playing by the stile, I saw his brown shadow loiter across the road and pass into the field that faced the houses. Instantly a cry of "Adolf!" a cry he knew full well. And instantly a wind swept him away down the sloping meadow, his tail twinkling and zig-zagging through the grass. After him we pelted. It was a strange sight to see him, ears back, his little loins so powerful, flinging the world behind him. We ran ourselves out of breath, but could not catch him. Then somebody headed him off, and he sat with sudden unconcern, twitching his nose under a bunch of nettles.

    His wanderings cost him a shock. One Sunday morning my father had just been quarreling with a pedlar, and we were hearing the aftermath indoors, when there came a sudden unearthly scream from the yard. We flew out. There sat Adolf cowering under a bench, whilst a great black and white cat glowered intently at him, a few yards away. Sight not to be forgotten. Adolf rolling back his eyes and parting his strange muzzle in another scream, the cat stretching forward in a slow elongation.

    Ha, how we hated that cat! How we pursued him over the chapel well and across the neighbours' gardens. Adolf was still only half grown.

    "Cats!" said my mother. "Hideous detestable animals, why do people harbour them!"

    But Adolf was becoming too much for her. He dropped too many pills. And suddenly to hear him clumping downstairs when she was alone in the house was startling. And to keep him from the door was impossible. Cats prowled outside. It was worse than having a child to look after.

    Yet we would not have him shut up. He became more lusty, more callous than ever. He was a strong kicker, and many a scratch on face and arms did we owe to him. But he brought his own doom on himself. The lace curtains in the parlour -- my mother was rather proud of them -- fell on to the floor very full. One of Adolf's joys was to scuffle wildly through them as though through some foamy undergrowth. He had already torn rents in them.

    One day he entangled himself altogether. He kicked, he whirled round in a mad nebulous inferno. He screamed -- and brought down the curtain-rod with a smash, right on the best beloved pelargonium, just as my mother rushed in. She extricated him, but she never forgave him. And he never forgave either. A heartless wildness had come over him.

    Even we understood that he must go. It was decided; after a long deliberation, that my father should carry him back to the wild-woods. Once again he was stowed into the great pocket of the pit-jacket.

    "Best pop him i' th' pot," said my father, who enjoyed raising the wind of indignation.

    And so, next day, our father said that Adolf, set down on the edge of the coppice, had hopped away with utmost indifference, neither elated nor moved. We heard it and believed. But many, many were the heart searchings...

Early Morning: Samuel Palmer, 1825, pen and ink and wash, mixed with gum arabic, varnished, 188 x 232 mm (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

 D. H. Lawrence: Adolf (excerpt), from The Dial, September 1920

this post for Angelica