Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 2
from the Collection “Gulliver's Travels”
Short summary
In 1703, an English ship seeking water reached an unknown coast. The ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver went ashore, was left behind when a giant chased the crew away, and was found by a giant farmer in a field of towering barley.
The farmer took him home. His nine-year-old daughter cared for him, sewed his clothes and taught him the language. He called her Glumdalclitch, meaning “little nurse”.
The farmer exhibited Gulliver for money at markets and across the country until he grew dangerously weak. The Queen then bought him and kept Glumdalclitch as his nurse.
At court Gulliver survived attacks by hail, wasps, a spiteful dwarf and a monkey that dragged him onto the roof. In long talks he praised England to the King.
The King questioned England's politics, courts, wars and history. Then, holding Gulliver in his hand, he concluded:
...I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Gulliver offered to teach him to make gunpowder, but the horrified King forbade him ever to mention it. After two years, during a royal trip to the coast, an eagle carried off Gulliver's travelling box and dropped it into the sea. An English ship rescued him. Back home, he at first treated his family as tiny people, and they thought him mad. His wife begged him never to sail again, but he hinted that he would.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. Gulliver is abandoned in Brobdingnag and taken in by a farmer
In June 1702, Lemuel Gulliver left his wife and children in England and sailed for Surat aboard the Adventure.
A leak and the captain's illness delayed the ship at the Cape of Good Hope until March 1703. Beyond Madagascar, storms drove it far east, leaving its position unknown and its fresh water scarce. In June, Gulliver joined a boat sent ashore for water. He wandered inland, then returned to see the sailors rowing away from a giant wading after them.
He fled into fields where grass rose twenty feet high and barley blocked his path. Hearing giant reapers approach, he hid among fallen stalks and remembered his family in despair:
Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and despair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow, and fatherless children.
When a reaper nearly stepped on him, Gulliver screamed. The man lifted him between finger and thumb, noticed his gestures and speech, and carried him gently to the farmer who owned the field.
The farmer examined him, but neither understood the other's language or the gold Gulliver offered. He wrapped him in a handkerchief and took him home, where his wife was at first frightened.
She soon fed him at the family table. The farmer rescued him when his son held him by the legs, and Gulliver persuaded him to forgive the boy. A baby put his head in its mouth and dropped him when he cried out, but its mother caught him. The nurse's coarse-looking skin reminded him how his own had appeared to tiny people in Lilliput. Left sleeping after dinner, he woke to two attacking rats, killed one with his sword and wounded the other. His hostess removed the dead rat and later carried him outside when he signalled his need for privacy.
Chapter 2. Glumdalclitch's care and Gulliver's life as a public spectacle
The farmer's nine-year-old daughter, Glumdalclitch, took charge of Gulliver and became his nurse and teacher.
She sewed and washed his linen, helped dress him and made a bed from a doll's cradle, kept in a drawer above the reach of rats. By naming objects he pointed to, she soon taught him to ask for what he needed. She named him Grildrig, meaning a tiny man; he called her Glumdalclitch, or little nurse. He later acknowledged his debt to her:
To her I chiefly owe my preservation in that country... I should be guilty of great ingratitude, if I omitted this honourable mention of her care and affection towards me...
News of the tiny speaking creature spread, and an elderly, short-sighted neighbouring farmer came to examine him.
Gulliver performed on a table but laughed at the visitor's magnified eyes behind his spectacles. The offended man advised exhibiting him for money. Glumdalclitch wept at the danger and humiliation, while Gulliver hoped he would eventually regain his freedom.
At the next market, the farmer took him to the Green Eagle inn in a ventilated box. The jolting ride exhausted him. Guarded by Glumdalclitch, he bowed, drank a toast from a thimble, fenced and handled a straw as a pike before twelve groups of spectators. A schoolboy nearly struck him with a hazelnut large enough to kill him and was beaten and expelled. Gulliver needed three days to recover, but paying visitors soon crowded the farmhouse.
Seeking greater profits, the farmer left for the capital on 17 August 1703. Glumdalclitch carried Gulliver in a padded box and pretended to be tired to spare him rough travel. During ten weeks, he performed in eighteen towns and many villages and houses. They reached Lorbrulgrud on 26 October, and he was shown ten times daily near the palace. His nurse continued teaching him speech, letters and reading from a religious book.
Chapter 3. The Queen buys Gulliver and he begins a hazardous life at court
Repeated exhibitions weakened Gulliver so badly that the farmer expected him to die. A court summons brought him before the Queen.
Delighted with his manners, she bought him for a thousand gold pieces. At his request, Glumdalclitch remained his nurse, with rooms and attendants. Gulliver barely bowed to the departing farmer, explaining that the man had worked him nearly to death and sold him before he lost his investment.
The Queen presented him to her husband, the King of Brobdingnag, who first suspected an animal or a mechanical toy.
Three scholars declared him a freak of nature, rejecting his account of a country where everything matched his size. The King questioned the farmer, Gulliver and Glumdalclitch, and their agreement made his story credible. A cabinet-maker built Gulliver a padded, lockable bedroom with furniture and a removable roof; the Queen provided clothing and tiny silver dishes.
He ate beside the Queen and discussed England with the King, who laughed at the quarrels and ambitions of such tiny people. Gulliver was offended, but gradually grew used to giant bodies and felt smaller beside the Queen in a mirror.
The Queen's dwarf, jealous of losing his distinction as the smallest person at court, tormented Gulliver.
He wedged him in a marrowbone and later dropped him into cream, from which Glumdalclitch rescued him. After punishment, he was sent away. Giant flies also plagued Gulliver at meals. When wasps invaded his box, he killed four with his sword and preserved their stings.
Chapter 4. The geography, capital and royal sights of Brobdingnag
Brobdingnag occupied a vast peninsula, cut off by volcanic mountains to the northeast and surrounded elsewhere by dangerous seas. With no usable ports, it had no contact with other countries. Rivers supplied fish and carried boats; ordinary sea fish were too small for the giants, though stranded whales sometimes reached the royal table. Gulliver believed the country belonged on European maps between Japan and California.
Lorbrulgrud stood on both banks of a river and contained about 80,000 houses and 600,000 inhabitants. The palace extended roughly seven miles around. Glumdalclitch took Gulliver through the city in a coach, sometimes holding him up to see. Beggars' enormous sores and the visible lice on their clothes horrified him.
The Queen ordered a smaller travelling box with barred windows, fixed furniture and a belt for a trusted rider to carry it. Glumdalclitch also showed him the chief temple. Its 3,000-foot tower seemed modest in proportion to its builders, though its walls and statues impressed him. She collected a fallen stone finger over four feet long. He admired the huge royal kitchen and the King's splendid mounted guard.
Chapter 5. Accidents, humiliations and the monkey's abduction
Gulliver also recalled dangers in the palace gardens. After he had mocked the dwarf beside dwarf apple trees, an apple shaken down in revenge had knocked him over. A hailstorm left him bruised for ten days. A gardener's spaniel once carried him gently to its master, frightening Glumdalclitch so badly that she decided never to leave him alone outdoors.
Gulliver hid other mishaps to preserve his freedom: a kite attacked him, he fell into a mole-hole and struck his shin against a snail's shell. A small bird fought him until a servant killed it. The Queen's ladies handled him as a toy and undressed before him; their smells and tricks made him ask to avoid their rooms.
Despite disliking executions, he accompanied Glumdalclitch to see a murderer beheaded. Even at a distance, the blood and bouncing head shocked him. To improve his health, the Queen next arranged for a tiny boat and a long wooden trough in the palace.
He rowed there and sailed while ladies fanned his sail. Once, a governess dropped him, but a pin in her clothing caught him until his nurse rescued him. Another time, a frog nearly overturned the boat, and he drove it out with an oar. Glumdalclitch stored the boat safely after use, but danger also entered her own room.
A monkey entered through an open window while Glumdalclitch was away and pulled Gulliver from his box. Holding him like a baby, it escaped onto the roof and forced food into his mouth. Servants brought ladders while a crowd watched below. As rescuers approached, it left him on a ridge tile, and a footman brought him down. Glumdalclitch cleared his mouth, but his bruises kept him in bed for two weeks. The monkey was killed and others were banned from the palace.
Afterward, Gulliver boasted to the King that his sword might have wounded the monkey, only to provoke laughter. Later he fell knee-deep into a cowpat while trying to jump over it, and the story made him a court joke for days.
Chapter 6. Ingenious gifts and the King's scrutiny of English society
Gulliver made a comb from the King's beard stubble and wove two miniature chairs from the Queen's hair. He refused to sit on hair that had adorned her head. He also made Glumdalclitch a purse from it. Court music overwhelmed him until his box was moved farther away and shut against the noise.
He entertained the royal couple by playing an English jig on Glumdalclitch's huge keyboard instrument. Running along a bench, he struck the keys with padded sticks, an exhausting method that allowed only a limited tune.
Gulliver argued that intelligence did not depend on size. The King listened and requested an account of English government. Over five audiences, Gulliver praised Parliament's lords, bishops and elected representatives, and described courts, finances, armies, religion, parties and recent history.
The King asked whether nobles and bishops rose through merit or patronage, whether wealthy men bought elections, and why candidates spent fortunes on unpaid seats. He questioned corrupt judges, lengthy lawsuits and lawyers defending unjust causes. Gulliver himself had nearly been ruined by a lawsuit he won.
The King asked how spending beyond revenue could last, why England fought costly wars and why free people needed paid soldiers in peacetime. Gambling, faction and violent political history disturbed him. Comparing Gulliver's praise with his answers, he delivered his verdict:
My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator...
He found little evidence that virtue qualified anyone for office and judged most of Gulliver's countrymen dangerous and corrupt.
Chapter 7. The King rejects gunpowder and reveals Brobdingnag's political ideals
Gulliver admitted that he had evaded questions and altered facts to defend England. Hoping to regain favour, he offered to teach the King to make gunpowder and cannon capable of destroying armies, ships and cities. Horrified by his calm description of slaughter, the King rejected the secret:
As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret...
He forbade further mention of it on pain of death. Gulliver still regarded his refusal as a needless scruple that denied him the means to make his power absolute.
The King rejected intrigue and valued reason, justice, mercy and quick legal decisions. He placed agricultural improvement above political schemes. Learning centred on morality, history, poetry and practical mathematics. Laws were short and plain, and legal commentaries were forbidden.
Gulliver read giant books using a movable staircase and found a treatise claiming that people had once been larger. The militia consisted of farmers and tradesmen led by unpaid nobles. Despite its isolation, the kingdom had suffered civil wars over power and liberty; the King's grandfather had ended the last through a settlement establishing the militia.
Chapter 8. The eagle carries Gulliver's box to sea and he returns home
After two years among giants, Gulliver still longed for freedom and his family. The King hoped to find him a woman of his own size, but he dreaded descendants bred as curiosities. Early in his third year, he travelled with the royal family towards the southern coast.
Near Flanflasnic, Glumdalclitch fell ill. Gulliver persuaded her to let a page take his box to the shore. While he slept, an eagle seized its carrying ring and lifted it into the sky. He believed other eagles attacked it, forcing it to drop the box into the sea. Its iron bottom kept it balanced, and tight joints kept out most water.
He opened the roof's air hole but feared drowning, hunger and cold. He later described the danger to its windows:
A breach in one single pane of glass would have been immediate death: nor could any thing have preserved the windows, but the strong lattice wires placed on the outside against accidents in travelling.
Hours later, he felt the box being towed and signalled through the opening with a handkerchief on a stick. English voices answered him. Still thinking in giant proportions, he asked a sailor to carry the box into the cabin. Instead, a carpenter cut through the roof and lowered a ladder to release him.
His rescuer, Thomas Wilcocks, took the weakened Gulliver to his cabin, gave him a drink and let him sleep.
The captain had mistaken the box for a sail before towing it to his ship. At first he suspected madness or a criminal punishment. Gulliver explained his adventures and proved his account with giant needles, wasp stings, royal hair and other objects saved from the box. Wilcocks refused a gold ring as thanks but accepted a giant servant's tooth. The crew stripped the box for useful materials and let its broken remains sink.
Gulliver's loud voice and surprise at ordinary-sized dishes amused Wilcocks. Years among giants had changed his habits. The captain urged him to publish his travels and refused payment for his passage. They reached the Downs on 3 June 1706.
Returning home, Gulliver thought people, houses and animals tiny and shouted warnings against trampling passers-by. He ducked through his doorway, stooped far too low to embrace his wife and tried to lift his daughter with one hand. His family's alarm recalled the captain's first doubts about him:
I behaved myself so unaccountably, that they were all of the Captain’s opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had lost my wits. This I mention as an instance of the great power of habit and prejudice.
They soon adjusted to one another, but his wife's demand that he never sail again did not end his desire for another voyage.