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SEA LIFE Brighton is an aquarium attraction in the English city of Brighton. Opened as Brighton Aquarium in 1872, it is the oldest operating aquarium in the world. The attraction was bought by Sea Life in 1991.[1][2]
From The Twainian Vol 36 No 2 (1977)
Clara wanted our Foundation to have what she considered a most beautiful descriptive account on very thin paper, in Mark's pencil handwriting, of his, visit to the Brighton Aquarium in September, 1872. It had been put away perhaps mainly because it was so very pale and difficult to read and certainly was fragmentary and not complete.
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The aquarium is a very large & handsome brick & stone structure whose top is on a level with the sea-front Street of Brighton & consequently one goes down a considerable flight of stairs to enter it. You first find yourself in a roomy hall (Pompeenian style of architecture) whose roof is supported by graceful columns whose capitals are carved into various kinds of fishes. On one side this opens into another roomy apartment where very complete & excellent breakfasts & dinners are served to all who desire them. On the other side you pass out into a spacious hall on either side of you are long, tall walls of plate-glass through which one looks into roomy, comfortable chambers (or drawing rooms) filled with limpid water, floored with clean sand & enclosed (on three sides) with rugged walls of rock that counterfeit the picturesque caves of the sea & then the inhabitants! Charming outlandish fishes that soar hither & thither, as if in the transparent air, & facinate one with their graceful forms & dainty colors; monster soldier-crabs & lobsters that go straddling about the sands & making the visitor's flesh crawl, hermit crabs traveling around in borrowed shells; ugly skates that lie flat on the bottom and remind one of nothing within the possibilities of nature unless it be of a slice off some kind of a devil; still uglier cuttlefish that remind one of an entire devil; prawns in shoals & schools; fishes that have little slender legs & walk on the other fishes that are white when they lie asleep on the bottom but turn red when they rise up & swim; specimens of a queer fish that takes the roe in-his mouth when his wife is delivered of it, & carries it about with him, never allowing her to touch it — & circumstances have led to the belief that he washes down his dinner with a few dozen raw when nobody is looking, for the eggs seem to lose bulk under his protection; beautiful sea-anemones (some white, some pink & some purple) grow like the most natural of flowers upon petrified lands of the submerged rocks & waiting for a chance to suck in & devour any small game that may wander above their treacherous blossoms, and chief of the show, imposing sea turtles big enough to carry passengers, go drifting about & among the picturesque caverns of the glass-fronted ocean palace that contains a hundred & ten thousand gallons of water.
It is a wonderful place, the Brighton aquarium, & was a majestic curiosity to me, for I had never seen anything but our little toy affairs before with half a dozen gold fish & a forlorn mud turtle.