Our Visit to The Mark Twain House & Museum

On the afternoon of 19th of July,  Yale University organized us to pay a visit to The Mark Twain House & Museum. At 12:45 pm, the school bus started off from the university gym. After almost an hour's bus drive, we arrived at the destination.  After we got off the bus, we found there was a large lawn and an elegantly-build red villa was up on a small hill.  And not far from the villa, there was another building, which must be the museum.  Led by our teacher Carrie, we first went into the museum. The museum guide told us that, opened in 2003, The Mark Twain Museum Center offers guests an opportunity to learn more about Mark Twain, his family, the historic house, and the author's legacy, and that the museum is composed of the Aetna Gallery with a permanent exhibition on Twain's life and work, a rotating exhibition hall, the Hartford Financial Services Theatre, showing a Ken Burns mini-documentary on Twain, classroom space,  the lecture hall-style Lincoln Financial Auditorium, and The Mark Twain Store, etc. Moreover, we learned from the guide  that The Mark Twain House & Museum is a National Historic Landmark in Hartford, Connecticut, and it was once the home of America's greatest author, Samuel Clemens ( Mark Twain) and his family from 1874 to 1891. It is also where Twain lived when he wrote his most important works, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and The Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. A stunning example of Picturesque Gothic architecture, etc. After the general introduction of the Mark Twain House & Museum, the guide then showed us around the above mentioned red villa. To our great surprise, Mark Twain, his wife Olivia Clemens and their three daughters  lived a very lavish life in the 25-room home which features a dramatic grand hall, a lush glass conservatory, a grand library and the handsome billiard room where Twain wrote his famous books. They lived here lavishly and happily for 17 years. It was what Mark Twain would later call the happiest and most productive years of his life in their Hartford home. 

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The following picture shows just one corner of the elegantly-built house, which later due to financial problems, the Clemenses were forced to sell to others in 1903.

Since we were not allowed to take pictures either in the house or the museum, I had to take a picture with the vivid statute of Mark Twain which was made up of thousands of small colorful plastic blocks. Awesome, right?