An Epistolary Flower by the Wayside

Discovered this afternoon in the course of further French Revolution research:

Lettres de la Marquise Du Deffand à Horace Walpole, Tome III
(published in Paris, 1812)
Extract from a letter, CLXIII, written on Sunday, October 25th, 1773

Mon projet est de vous envoyer toutes sortes de rapsodies par M. Craufurd; je ne pénetre pas ce qui le retient ici [en France] si long-temps; ce n'est certainement pas parce qu'il s'y amuse. Il s'ennuie à la mort, et prétend toujours être fort malade; il n'y a jamais eu deux êtres plus différents que vous et lui. Je le vois tous les jours; je me crois un prodige de raison en comparaison de lui.

Source: Gallica.bnf.fr

Rightly or wrongly, Mme. du Deffand reminds me a little of my paternal grandmother. Certainly she is an ideal letter-writer and wit and warm friend to Walpole, even if the constant ego-stroking seems indelicate. When glimpses of sentimentality appear, it is neither sickly nor exaggerated.

I like the passage quoted above because it is so blunt but finely expressed, and does awaken some curiosity as to the personality of "M. Craufurd" even if based on the brief description his particular brand of recalcitrant obstinacy sounds like the petulance of a thoroughgoing bore.

But if he is (as a cursory websearch leads me to suspect) indeed Quentin/Quintin Craufurd, his life — spanning a sojourn in India, literary pursuits, and being a cook in the broth of the French monarchs' flight to Varennes — must have been lively.

In hasty, 18th-century-esque translation:

My project is to send to you all manner of rhapsodies by M. Craufurd. I cannot discern what retains him here [in France] so long; it is certainly not because he is well entertained there. He is languishing of boredom and always pretending to be greatly ill; never have there been two beings more different than you and he. I see him daily; I believe myself a prodigy of reason in comparison to him.