May 17 Saturday – Livy and Sam wrote onboard the SS Batavia to Olivia Lewis Langdon. The ship pulled away from the New York harbor in the morning. Livy wrote that Mrs. Fairbanks had just left them and that Livy’s friend Fidele Brooks also visited. Accompanying the party was Samuel C. Thompson, who was to be Sam’s secretary to take dictation using the method of shorthand he’d been teaching. Sam wrote: “Good bye, mother dear, we are just backing away from the pier. Shall send this back by the pilot” [MTL 5: 366-7].

When the ship was underway Sam wrote to Charles Dudley Warner. Whitelaw Reid had angered Sam by refusing to let Edward House review The Gilded Age for the Tribune. Sam had agreed to send a few letters to the Herald (he sent five on the Shah’s visit to England) and also for the Boston Daily Advertiser. He refused to grant the dramatist Dion Boucicault more than one-third of the profits for dramatizing the book. He also informed Warner that he’d filed a lawsuit against Benjamin J. Such [MTL 5: 367-70].

May 17 to May 27 Tuesday – The voyage was uneventful except for a few days of high seas in the first week. Livy, Clara Spaulding, and nurse Nellie were seasick, the latter most affected [MTL 5: 370-1]. Captain John E. Mouland insisted that Livy bring Nellie and Susy in her basket into his chartroom to be more comfortable; he took long walks on deck with Clara; and Livy wrote in her diary,

“He grows more and more delightful the better one knows him—We would not come back with any one else, on any account, if it is possible to come with him.” She added that after a couple of days, Susy began to eat better than she ever had [Salsbury 19]. Note: Livy misspelled the Captain’s name as “Morland.”