ENTRY #121
Toby.
Webster F. Street (1899-1984), World War I veteran, Stanford classmate (an unpublished play by Street provided the basis for Steinbeck’s 1933 novel
To a God Unknown),
boon companion (Steinbeck was best man at Street’s wedding in 1925), and lifelong friend had become a lawyer (LLB, Stanford, 1928) and moved from Palo Alto to Monterey in 1935. A prolific writer and specialist in maritime law, Street helped secure the
Western Flyer
charter, and later he handled Carol’s and John’s divorce. His colorful, but self-deprecating, reminiscences are available in Richard Astro and Tetsumaro Hayashi, eds.,
Steinbeck: The Man and His Work
(Corvallis: Oregon State University, 1971), pp. 35-41; and in an interview published in
San Jose Studies,
I (November 1975), 109-27. Steinbeck immortalized “The Webster F. Street Lay-Away Plan—a martini made with chartreuse instead of vermouth,” in Chapter 23 of
Sweet Thursday,
and the valorous fighting deeds of “Sir Tobinus Streat de Montroy” in
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
(p. 61), the latter called to my attention by John Ditsky.