The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Versailles alone was worth the trouble and expense of the trip. “The range of building is immense; the garden front most magnificent, all of hewn stone; the number of statues, figures, urns, &c. in marble and bronze of exquisite workmanship is beyond conception.” The cost of construction was estimated to Franklin at £80 million. Yet someone was stinting on maintenance. “The waterworks are out of repair, and so is a great part of the front next the town, looking with its shabby half brick walls and broken windows not much better than the houses in Durham Yard.” The effect was odd, but French. “There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious mixture of magnificence and negligence, with every kind of elegance except that of cleanliness and what we call tidyness.”