No letters written between 17 and 29 May 1873 have been found. The Atlantic crossing on board the Batavia with Captain Mouland was largely uneventful, except for several days of heavy weather during the first week, which sent Olivia and Clara to their berths with seasickness. Nellie, Susy’s nursemaid, was even more severely afflicted. Olivia wrote her mother:
Susie staid in her basket in the Capt.’s chart room all day—Nellie lying on the sofa there but Mr Clemens taking the main care of her she slept most of the day. . . . Capt. Mouland is just about perfection, he has done every thing that he possibly could to make us comfortable and to make things pleasant for us, he and Clara take long walks on the deck together— . . .
The table is very good indeed but we lack appetites some what. . . .
We have had two or three very rough days, not stormy but the waves high so that the vessel rocks frightfully— . . .
When I started to go to the dinner table yesterday afternoon there came a lunge of the ship and I took the curtain that hangs between the main saloon and our little passage with me into the saloon and went rushing headlong against the waiters— Clara who was coming just behind me was so convulsed with laughter that she was obliged to return to her state room and laugh it out— (23 and 26 May 73, CtHMTH)
The party disembarked at Liverpool on 27 May, and stayed over for one night, probably as guests of Captain and Mrs. Mouland, who lived in Linacre (a town on the Mersey slightly north of Liverpool), before taking the train to London (Gore’s Directory, 351, 663; “Shipping Intelligence,” London Times, 29 May 73, 6). Thompson recalled:
Mr. and Mrs. Clemens paid a visit to Mrs. Mouland and the Captain at their suburban home. Some passengers had so spoken of Wales that it was determined that we should make a detour that way. But it was found inconvenient and postponed; so we soon left for London. (Thompson, 84)
Olivia wrote her sister that they
left Liverpool at 11.30 and reached here London about 5.30 the ride was the most charming that I ever could imagine— . . . So many things that I had read were made plain to me as we rode along—the little thatched villages, the foot paths by the side of the road— It was like riding for all those hours through Central Park— (31 May 73, CtHMTH)
Upon the recommendation of a fellow passenger, the Clemenses took rooms at a private hotel, Edwards’s Royal Cambridge Hotel in Hanover Square; Thompson “took lodging in a cheaper locality near by” (Thompson, 85; Baedeker 1878, 7). Thompson recalled:
There was little routine in our daily life here. Sometimes Clemens would dictate in the morning. But there were callers, excursions and sightseeings. He preferred to dictate when fresh from some outing. Otherwise he would forget what he wanted to record. He would light a cigar, walk back and forth and spin it out while I took it down, with an audible grin now and then, the ladies at their needlework. “How cosy this is,” said Mrs. Clemens. (Thompson, 85)
The Clemenses were soon so busy with social engagements that they had little time for sightseeing. According to Albert Bigelow Paine, “It was a period of continuous honor and entertainment. If Mark Twain had been a lion on his first visit, he was little less than royalty now. His rooms at the Langham to which he moved on 25 June were like a court” ( MTB , 1:484).