October 26, 1703

October 26, 1703, is the date on which Lemuel Gulliver, after a grueling ten-week journey of about three thousand miles, arrived at Lorbrulgrud, the capital of Brobdingnag. This day marked the decisive transition of his status from a traveling exhibit shown for profit in market towns and villages to a permanent resident of the royal court, where he would be purchased by the Queen of Brobdingnag and become a companion to the king and queen. The arrival at the metropolis, whose name in the Brobdingnagian language means "Pride of the Universe," set the stage for Gulliver's most extended period of reflection on the relative nature of human grandeur and the moral and political character of Europe.

Journey to the Metropolis

Gulliver's arrival at Lorbrulgrud was the culmination of a journey that began on August 17, 1703, about two months after his initial capture by the Brobdingnagian farmer. The farmer, finding his captive profitable, resolved to carry him to the most considerable cities of the kingdom. He made his daughter Glumdalclitch ride behind him on a pillion, carrying Gulliver on her lap in a box tied about her waist. The girl had lined the box with the softest cloth she could get, well quilted underneath, and furnished it with her baby's bed. They made easy journeys of not above seven or eight score miles a day, for Glumdalclitch, on purpose to spare Gulliver, complained she was tired with the trotting of the horse. During the ten weeks, Gulliver was shown in eighteen large towns, besides many villages and private families, performing tricks on a table for paying audiences.

Arrival and First Impressions

Upon reaching Lorbrulgrud on October 26, 1703, the farmer took a lodging in the principal street of the city, not far from the royal palace. He put out bills containing an exact description of Gulliver's person and parts, and hired a large room between three and four hundred feet wide. He provided a table sixty feet in diameter, upon which Gulliver was to act his part, and palisaded it round three feet from the edge and as many high to prevent his falling over. Gulliver was shown ten times a day to the wonder and satisfaction of all people. By this time, he could speak the Brobdingnagian language tolerably well and perfectly understood every word that was spoken to him. He had also learned their alphabet and could make a shift to explain a sentence here and there, thanks to Glumdalclitch's instruction during the journey and at leisure hours. She carried a little book in her pocket, not much larger than a Sanson's Atlas, a common treatise for the use of young girls giving a short account of their religion, out of which she taught him his letters and interpreted the words.

Transition to Court Life

The frequent labors of daily exhibition made a very considerable change in Gulliver's health in a few weeks. The more the farmer got by him, the more insatiable he grew. Gulliver had quite lost his stomach and was almost reduced to a skeleton. The farmer, concluding he must soon die, resolved to make as good a hand of him as he could. While he was thus reasoning with himself, a gentleman-usher came from court, commanding the farmer to carry Gulliver immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies. Some of the latter had already been to see him and reported strange things of his beauty, behavior, and good sense. The queen and those who attended her 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 towards him, which he embraced in both his arms and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to his lip. She asked whether he would be content to live at court, and he answered that he was his master's slave but 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 begged that Glumdalclitch might be admitted into the queen's service and continue to be his nurse and instructor, a petition the queen easily granted.

Significance of the Date

The arrival at Lorbrulgrud on October 26, 1703, thus marks the pivot from Gulliver's life as a commodified spectacle—a source of profit for a farmer who worked him nearly to death—to his life as a protected curiosity of the court. It is the date that made possible his extended conversations with the King of Brobdingnag, during which Gulliver delivered a panegyric on England that the king ultimately dismissed by calling the English "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." It also set the conditions for his eventual escape, when an eagle carried off his travelling box from the south coast near Flanflasnic and dropped it into the sea, where an English ship rescued him. The date anchors the entire Brobdingnag episode in a specific temporal coordinate, grounding Swift's satirical fantasy in the conventions of travel literature that insisted on precise chronology.