Gulliver's Travels

he humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An account of
their learning. Of the king and his court. The author’s reception
there. The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes. An account of
the women.

At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who
stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all
the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in
their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular
in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all
reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned
inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments
were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven
with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords,
and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I
observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown
bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they
carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried
peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these
bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who
stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the
meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with
intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the
discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction
upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons
who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is
climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk
abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer
is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike
with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of
him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is
likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and
upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always
so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling
down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in
the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the
kennel.

It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which he
would be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings of
these people, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the
island, and from thence to the royal palace. While we were ascending,
they forgot several times what they were about, and left me to myself,
till their memories were again roused by their flappers; for they
appeared altogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and
countenance, and by the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds
were more disengaged.

At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of
presence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on each
side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large table
filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all
kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our
entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all
persons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem; and
we attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. There stood by
him, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and when
they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and
the other his right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the
sudden, and looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected
the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He
spoke some words, whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up
to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs,
as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument;
which, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a
very mean opinion of my understanding. The king, as far as I could
conjecture, asked me several questions, and I addressed myself to him
in all the languages I had. When it was found I could neither
understand nor be understood, I was conducted by his order to an
apartment in his palace (this prince being distinguished above all his
predecessors for his hospitality to strangers), where two servants were
appointed to attend me. My dinner was brought, and four persons of
quality, whom I remembered to have seen very near the king’s person,
did me the honour to dine with me. We had two courses, of three dishes
each. In the first course, there was a shoulder of mutton cut into an
equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboides, and a pudding
into a cycloid. The second course was two ducks trussed up in the form
of fiddles; sausages and puddings resembling flutes and hautboys, and a
breast of veal in the shape of a harp. The servants cut our bread into
cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical
figures.

While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several things
in their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of their
flappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration
of their great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them. I
was soon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted.

After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by the
king’s order, attended by a flapper. He brought with him pen, ink, and
paper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by signs, that
he was sent to teach me the language. We sat together four hours, in
which time I wrote down a great number of words in columns, with the
translations over against them; I likewise made a shift to learn
several short sentences; for my tutor would order one of my servants to
fetch something, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to stand, or
walk, and the like. Then I took down the sentence in writing. He showed
me also, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars,
the zodiac, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the
denominations of many planes and solids. He gave me the names and
descriptions of all the musical instruments, and the general terms of
art in playing on each of them. After he had left me, I placed all my
words, with their interpretations, in alphabetical order. And thus, in
a few days, by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight
into their language. The word, which I interpret the flying or floating
island, is in the original Laputa, whereof I could never learn the
true etymology. Lap, in the old obsolete language, signifies high;
and untuh, a governor; from which they say, by corruption, was
derived Laputa, from Lapuntuh. But I do not approve of this
derivation, which seems to be a little strained. I ventured to offer to
the learned among them a conjecture of my own, that Laputa was quasi
lap outed; lap, signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in
the sea, and outed, a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but
submit to the judicious reader.

Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad,
ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of
clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner from
those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant,
and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and
outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six
days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by
happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was,
that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.

During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition that
held me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and when I
went next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke,
and to return him some kind of answers. His majesty had given orders,
that the island should move north-east and by east, to the vertical
point over Lagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below, upon the
firm earth. It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage lasted
four days and a half. I was not in the least sensible of the
progressive motion made in the air by the island. On the second
morning, about eleven o’clock, the king himself in person, attended by
his nobility, courtiers, and officers, having prepared all their
musical instruments, played on them for three hours without
intermission, so that I was quite stunned with the noise; neither could
I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor informed me. He said that,
the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear “the music of
the spheres, which always played at certain periods, and the court was
now prepared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they most
excelled.”

In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered
that the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from
whence he might receive the petitions of his subjects. And to this
purpose, several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the
bottom. On these packthreads the people strung their petitions, which
mounted up directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by schoolboys at
the end of the string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine
and victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.

The knowledge I had in mathematics gave me great assistance in
acquiring their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and
music; and in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are
perpetually conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for
example, praise the beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they
describe it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other
geometrical terms, or by words of art drawn from music, needless here
to repeat. I observed in the king’s kitchen all sorts of mathematical
and musical instruments, after the figures of which they cut up the
joints that were served to his majesty’s table.

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel, without one right
angle in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they
bear to practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic;
those instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of
their workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although they
are dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the
rule, the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and
behaviour of life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy
people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other
subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad
reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen
to be of the right opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination,
fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words
in their language, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole
compass of their thoughts and mind being shut up within the two
forementioned sciences.

Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part,
have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to
own it publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogether
unaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards
news and politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving
their judgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every
inch of a party opinion. I have indeed observed the same disposition
among most of the mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I
could never discover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless
those people suppose, that because the smallest circle has as many
degrees as the largest, therefore the regulation and management of the
world require no more abilities than the handling and turning of a
globe; but I rather take this quality to spring from a very common
infirmity of human nature, inclining us to be most curious and
conceited in matters where we have least concern, and for which we are
least adapted by study or nature.

These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a
minute’s peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes
which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise
from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance,
that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it,
must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of
the sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give
no more light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a
brush from the tail of the last comet, which would have infallibly
reduced it to ashes; and that the next, which they have calculated for
one-and-thirty years hence, will probably destroy us. For if, in its
perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as
by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a
degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot
glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten
hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth
should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the
nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on
fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays
without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed
and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this
earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.

They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and
the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in
their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements
of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first
question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and
rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching
comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper
that boys discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits
and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed
for fear.

The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they contemn their
husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is
always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at
court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or
their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they
want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants:
but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for
the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and
lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he
be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at
his side.

The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island,
although I think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and
although they live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and
are allowed to do whatever they please, they long to see the world, and
take the diversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do
without a particular license from the king; and this is not easy to be
obtained, because the people of quality have found, by frequent
experience, how hard it is to persuade their women to return from
below. I was told that a great court lady, who had several children,—is
married to the prime minister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a
very graceful person, extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest
palace of the island,—went down to Lagado on the pretence of health,
there hid herself for several months, till the king sent a warrant to
search for her; and she was found in an obscure eating-house all in
rags, having pawned her clothes to maintain an old deformed footman,
who beat her every day, and in whose company she was taken, much
against her will. And although her husband received her with all
possible kindness, and without the least reproach, she soon after
contrived to steal down again, with all her jewels, to the same
gallant, and has not been heard of since.

This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or English
story, than for one of a country so remote. But he may please to
consider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climate
or nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easily
imagined.

In about a month’s time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in their
language, and was able to answer most of the king’s questions, when I
had the honour to attend him. His majesty discovered not the least
curiosity to inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or
manners of the countries where I had been; but confined his questions
to the state of mathematics, and received the account I gave him with
great contempt and indifference, though often roused by his flapper on
each side.