Brobdingnag court

The Brobdingnag court is the royal household of the giant kingdom where Lemuel Gulliver is brought after being purchased from a farmer by the Queen of Brobdingnag. It serves as the primary setting for Gulliver's second voyage, a place of both protection and peril, where his diminutive size subjects him to constant physical danger and where he engages in extended philosophical dialogues with the King of Brobdingnag that expose the corruption of European civilization.

Purchase and Arrival at Court

Gulliver's entry into the Brobdingnag court begins when a gentleman-usher from court commands the farmer who had captured him to bring him immediately to the palace for the diversion of the queen and her ladies. Some of the ladies had already seen Gulliver and reported strange things of his beauty, behavior, and good sense. The queen and her attendants were beyond measure delighted with his demeanor. Gulliver fell on his knees and begged the honor of kissing her imperial foot; the queen held out her little finger toward him, which he embraced in both arms and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to his lip. She made general questions about his country and travels, which he answered as distinctly as possible. When she asked whether he would be content to live at court, Gulliver bowed down to the board of the table and humbly answered that he was his master's slave, but if he were at his own disposal he would be proud to devote his life to her majesty's service. The queen then asked the farmer whether he were willing to sell Gulliver at a good price. The farmer, who apprehended Gulliver could not live a month, was ready enough to part with him and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot. Gulliver then asked the queen that Glumdalclitch, who had always attended him with so much care and kindness, might be admitted into her service and continue to be his nurse and instructor. The queen agreed to the petition and easily got the farmer's consent; the poor girl herself was not able to hide her joy. The late master withdrew, bidding farewell, to which Gulliver replied not a word, only making him a slight bow. The queen observed Gulliver's coldness and asked the reason; he told her that he owed no other obligation to his late master than his not dashing out the brains of a poor harmless creature found by chance in his field, an obligation amply recompensed by the gain he had made in showing him through half the kingdom and the price he had now sold him for.

Life at Court and the Queen's Favor

The queen became so fond of Gulliver's company that she could not dine without him. A table was placed upon the same at which her majesty ate, just at her left elbow, with a chair for him to sit on. Glumdalclitch stood on a stool on the floor near his table to assist and take care of him. Gulliver had an entire set of silver dishes and plates and other necessaries, which in proportion to those of the queen were not much bigger than what he had seen in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a baby-house; his little nurse kept them in her pocket in a silver box and gave them to him at meals as he wanted them, always cleaning them herself. No person dined with the queen but the two princesses royal, the elder sixteen years old and the younger thirteen and a month. The queen's diversion was to see Gulliver eat in miniature; she herself, who had but a weak stomach, took up at one mouthful as much as a dozen English farmers could eat at a meal, which to Gulliver was for some time a very nauseous sight. She would craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a full-grown turkey, and put a bit of bread in her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She drank out of a golden cup above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and other instruments were all in the same proportion. The queen also ordered the thinnest silks that could be gotten to make Gulliver clothes, not much thicker than an English blanket, very cumbersome until he was accustomed to them. They were after the fashion of the kingdom, partly resembling the Persian and partly the Chinese, and were a very grave and decent habit.

Dangers and Humiliations at Court

Despite the queen's favor, Gulliver's life at court was filled with constant physical threats. The queen's dwarf, who was not full thirty feet high, became insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him and would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by Gulliver in the queen's ante-chamber. One day at dinner, this malicious little cub, nettled by something Gulliver had said, raised himself upon the frame of her majesty's chair, took Gulliver up as he was sitting down, and let him drop into a large silver bowl of cream, then ran away as fast as he could. Gulliver fell over head and ears, and if he had not been a good swimmer it might have gone very hard with him; Glumdalclitch happened to be at the other end of the room, and the queen was in such a fright that she wanted presence of mind to assist him. His little nurse ran to his relief and took him out after he had swallowed above a quart of cream. The dwarf was soundly whipped and, as a further punishment, forced to drink up the bowl of cream into which he had thrown Gulliver; he was never restored to favor, and the queen soon bestowed him on a lady of high quality. The dwarf had before served Gulliver a scurvy trick, squeezing his legs together and wedging them into a marrow-bone above his waist, where he stuck for some time making a very ridiculous figure. At Gulliver's entreaty, the dwarf had no other punishment than a sound whipping. The queen frequently rallied Gulliver upon account of his fearfulness, asking whether the people of his country were as great cowards as himself. The kingdom was much pestered with flies in summer, each as big as a Dunstable lark, which hardly gave Gulliver any rest while he sat at dinner with their continual humming and buzzing about his ears. They would sometimes alight upon his victuals, sometimes fix upon his nose or forehead where they stung him to the quick. The dwarf's common practice was to catch a number of these insects in his hand and let them out suddenly under Gulliver's nose on purpose to frighten him and divert the queen. Gulliver's remedy was to cut them in pieces with his knife as they flew in the air, wherein his dexterity was much admired.

The King's Judgments and Gulliver's Disillusionment

It was the custom that every Wednesday, their Sabbath, the king and queen with the royal issue of both sexes dined together in the apartment of his majesty, to whom Gulliver became a great favorite. His little chair and table were placed at the king's left hand, before one of the salt-cellars. The king took a pleasure in conversing with Gulliver, inquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe. His apprehension was so clear and his judgment so exact that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all Gulliver said. But after Gulliver had been a little too copious in talking of his own beloved country, of their trade and wars by sea and land, of their schisms in religion and parties in the state, the prejudices of the king's education prevailed so far that he could not forbear taking Gulliver up in his right hand and, stroking him gently with the other after a hearty fit of laughing, asked him whether he was a whig or a tory. Then turning to his first minister, he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as Gulliver, and yet, he said, he dared engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honor; they contrive little nests and burrows that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray. Gulliver's color came and went several times with indignation to hear his noble country so contemptuously treated. The king, after hearing Gulliver's account of England, delivered himself in words Gulliver would never forget: "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; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. 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." When Gulliver offered to reveal the secret of gunpowder, the king was struck with horror and protested that he would rather lose half his kingdom than be privy to such a secret, commanding Gulliver never to mention it any more.

Departure and Aftermath

Gulliver's deliverance from the Brobdingnag court came sooner than he expected. While attending the king and queen on a progress to the south coast, Glumdalclitch fell ill, and Gulliver was taken to the seaside by a page. He fell asleep in his travelling-box, and an eagle seized the ring of the box in its beak, carried it high into the air, and after a struggle with other eagles dropped it into the sea. Gulliver was rescued by an English ship commanded by Captain Thomas Wilcocks. When he returned to England, he found himself unable to adjust to normal human scale: he bent down to go into his own house like a goose under a gate for fear of striking his head, stooped lower than his wife's knees thinking she could otherwise never reach his mouth, and could not see his daughter until she arose because he had been so long used to standing with his head and eyes erect to above sixty feet. He looked down upon the servants and friends as if they had been pygmies and he a giant, and told his wife she had starved herself and her daughter to nothing. His family concluded he had lost his wits, an instance Gulliver himself mentions of the great power of habit and prejudice.