May 17 Thursday –Sam wrote from New York to Livy.
“Livy darling, it is 8.30 AM & Joe & I have been wandering about for half an hour with satchels & overcoats, asking questions of policemen; at last we have found the eating house I was after. Joe’s country aspect & the seal-skin coat caused one policeman to follow us a few blocks” [MTLE 2: 73].
The desired café was on William St. near Fulton [D. Hoffman 27]. Sam mentioned the thunderstorm in the night, causing him to worry about her (this mention shows that the pair went to the city on May 16.) The two men planned to “loaf around to Mr. Sage’s business place after breakfast.” Dean Sage, Brooklyn writer, sportsman, was contributor to the Atlantic and The Nation, among other magazines [MTLE 2: 73].
Clemens and Twichell had a New York breakfast, and in the hot mid-afternoon boarded the mail steamer Bermuda in first class. The boat carried thirteen other passengers for a four-day journey [D. Hoffman 27]. From Sam’s notebook:
Left at 330. Blazing hot till we got outside—then cold rain; put on seal skin coat & tied up the collar with silk handkercf. Steamer came out with us, went ahead. Hearty supper at 6. Chat in smoking cabin till 830. Then whisky & to bed. Had a lantern hung at my head & read self to sleep with Motley’s Netherlands. Kept waking up with nightmares all night—coffee for supper—finally fell to reading at 2 or 3 & read till sunrise [MTNJ 2: 16]. Note: the literary reference is to John Lothrop Motley’s Motley’s The Rise of the Dutch Nation (1856) [Gribben 489].
By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight. No telegrams could come here, no letters, no news. This was an uplifting thought. It was still more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed people on shore behind us were suffering as usual [“Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion”].
May 17 to 21 Monday – The voyage on the Bermuda took four days to reach St. George’s Harbor. During the trip, Sam read John Lothrop Motley’s The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and later (Aug. 6) wrote Mollie Fairbanks he “would have thrown the book into the sea if I had owned it” [MTLE 2: 126]. Note: Motley (1814-1877).
Powers writes that away from Hartford and his pulpit, Twichell’s naiveté to unfamiliar surroundings surfaced, and Sam kindheartedly referred to him as “fool” in his notes [MT A Life 404]. According to the 1871 Census, Bermuda had a population of 12,121: 7,396 colored, 4,725 whites [D. Hoffman 33].