Dear Straney

Straney letter

Maybe the most wonderful item I’ve seen come up for auction has appeared, coming up in California on July 3, 2025.

It is this letter, pictured above, written by Benjamin Franklin to William Strahan on July 23, 1762.

The full text of Franklin’s letter, as posted on the auction site, with some spacing, is:

London, 23 July, 1762.

Dear Straney: As Dr. Hawkesworth calls you, I send you inclosed a line to my good friend Dr. Kelley; which you will do me the favour to deliver with the parcel directed to him.

As it is vacation time I doubt whether any other acquaintance of mine may be in Oxford, or at least any on whose good nature I could so far presume; tho‘ according to the way of the world, having received a civility, gives one a kind of right to demand another; they took the trouble of showing me Oxford, and therefore I might request them to show it to any of my friends.

None of the Oxford people are under any other obligation to me than that of having already oblig‘d me, and being oblig‘d to go on as they have begun.

My best respects to Mrs. Strahan, and love to little Peggy. They say we are to sail in a week or ten days. I expect to see you once more.

I value myself much, on being able to resolve on doing the right thing, in opposition to your almost irresistible eloquence, secretly supported and backed by my own treacherous inclinations.

Adieu, my Dear friend. Yours affectionately, B. Franklin.

The Moment

This letter is dated July 23, 1762, nine days after Franklin sent his description of the armonica to Sr. Beccaria. Strahan was on a three-week tour to Bath, Bristol, Salisbury and Oxford (Papers, X:133n8).

Franklin was preparing to return to America. No one fully expected Franklin to return to England.

William Strahan wrote a letter for Benjamin to deliver to his partner David Hall on August 10, 1762, expressing Strahan’s own sorrow at Benjamin’s departure. This is a poignant letter, published in Volume 10 of the Papers at page 140. I do not find it in Founds Online, but it is in the Packard collection. Strahan closed his letter to David Hall with this:

I cannot tell you, after all, how much I feel on this melancholy Occasion, or how sensibly I am touched with parting from so amiable a Friend; a Separation so much the more bitter and agonizing, as it is likely to be endless.

Franklin left London I believer on August 10 (carrying Strahan’s letter to David Hall) and sailed from Portsmouth on August 23 or 24. Franklin did not stay for the wedding of his son William to Elizabeth Downes, which took place at St. George’s Church in Hanover Square on September 4. William was appointed Royal Governor of New Jersey on September 9.

In a speech to the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC, Claude-Anne Lopez read Franklin’s letter to Mary Stevenson (Polly), written from Portsmouth on August 11, 1762, which expressed his sorrow that William was not going to marry Polly herself.

Remarkable Content

The salutation “Dear Straney: As Dr. Hawkesworth calls you” suggests this is the first time Franklin addressed Strahan in this casual way.

The somewhat tortured business about his friends in Oxford being obliged to help Strahan because they had already been nice to Franklin is reminiscent of the passage in the Autobiography of Franklin’s inventing a kindness that someone could do for him as part of a strategy to make them more likely to help him again in other matters. I believe this is distantly related to the “hang separately” quote, which is a topic for another posting.

The letter closes with this blockbuster sentence:

 I value myself much, on being able to resolve on doing the right thing, in opposition to your almost irresistible eloquence, secretly supported and backed by my own treacherous inclinations.

To unpack some of these references:

  • “the right thing” is going home to Deborah
  • “you almost irresistible eloquence” is Strahan’s encouragement for him to stay in England, which went so far as his writing to Deborah to move to London
  • “my own treacherous inclinations” references Franklin’s own desire to stay in England, which he overruled

History of the Letter

The letter has been known to Franklinians since at least 1887, when it appears in John Bigelow’s The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin (New York and London, 1887-88), III, 208-9. This appearance does not include any mention of Bigelow’s source.

I don’t know of any appearance before Bigelow. I do not find this letter in Jared Sparks’ edition of The Works of Franklin. Volume 8, published in 1838, contains his farewell letters to Mary Stevenson (of 11 August) and Lord James (17 August). It is not listed in the comprehensive index in volume 10.

When the Papers volume 10 went to press in 1959, the editors could only cite Bigelow: the manuscript is listed as “not found.” Founders Online entry.

The Provenance section of this auction announcement fills in some of the history of the document, as follows:

 Family of William Henry Crocker I (1861-1937); gift to manservant, Louis Collaud (1893-1972) in 1932; bequest, to Nancy Meyer Kolmodin (proprietor of Friedrich‘s Gifts & Antiques, Lafayette, CA); bequest, to present consignor. Included is a copy of an undated news article from the Contra Costa Times (now East Bay Times) showing Nancy M. Kolmodin with the letter and detailing provenance to her.

Presuming that Mr. Collaud kept the letter till his death in 1972 at age 81, he was the owner when then editors of the Papers tried to find this manuscript leading up to the 1959 publication. Mr. Collaud’s wife had passed away the previous year, no children are listed in FindAGrave memorials.

See Also