DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947

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Variant, v. 1, issue 3, September 1947

Page 46

THOMAS BENTWORTH CHASTOR
writer, clubman
PASSES

At two A.M. last Thursday, Thomas Bentworth Chastor was found stiff on his favorite bar stool. Before him was a cocktail glass containing half an ounce of dry martini and a pearl onion. His right hand had its fingers bent, as though death had found him in the act of groping. Yes, your favorite author and mine is dead! He died of starvation: toward the end he was paying his publishers only one half cent a word. Chastor's exact age could not be determined. As the barman (who never had heard of prohibition) remembered having seen him sitting there for forty years, it is a reasonable supposition that he was sixty-one years old.

Many who never read his erudite and whimsical literary compositions will recall his tall, lean, stooped, scholarly figure as it crawled (alas! at times unsteadily, but never missing a pub.) from bar to tavern along the more obscure streets of our city, they will remember his cordial leer for the women, known to him or unknown, no matter what their ages, passed along the way; his uncouth propositions, advanced with naif charm, that spurious English accent, which he had acquired from reading P.G. Wodehouse in the original; his childlike glee when he moistened some friend's upholstry. It was no unusual thing to see him, arrive at a party with clothing disarranged, toss his muffins into the lap of the hostess: and many recall his ingratiating smile of apology as he rose to his feet after crashing through an antique table. " Fragile thing, what?" was his riposte on this occasion. All will miss him.

Bartenders have said that he was wittier in conversation than in his literary output. This is difficult for us to believe; and closer questioning disclosed that these estimable gentlemen were not too familiar with Bentworthiana. Certainly quick at repartee; to coin a phrase--rapier-sharp with the mot juste (Fr. wise-crack) though he was, still his literary creations bubble like a freshly deluged alka-seltzer.

Perhaps his most quoted verbal coinage is the recondite definition of love as a feeling of ecstacy between blood tests. (There is no truth to the story, once current, that Chastor flunked a Wasserman. On the one occasion when he had sufficient blood to spare enough for a test, its only ascertainable quality was a proof of 94.8. There were no abnormalities except for a trace of French Vermouth. At the time, science doubted that the stuff from his veins was blood.)

There are extant many examples of his conversational facility, of his ready with. Sometimes, simply, he belched. One story of quick retort must be told. Once a bartender told him that he had one too many for that nonce, to go home and take a nap and that everything would be alright in the morning. What Chastor told that bartender to do is still repeated in quite salon corners, with appreciative chuckles, at more exclusive soires. Sharp, he was! He was quite the fellow, really!

One wonders what Hollywood might have done with the work of Thomas Bentworth.

(46)

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THOMAS BENTWORTH CHASTOR writer, clubman PASSES At two A.M. last Thursday, Thomas Bentworth Chastor was found stiff on his favorite bar stool. Before him was a cocktail glass containing half an ounce of dry martini and a pearl onion. His right hand had its fingers bent, as though death had found him in the act of groping. Yes, your favorite author and mine is dead! He died of starvation: toward the end he was paying his publishers only one half cent a word. Chastor's exact age could not be determined. As the barman (who never had heard of prohibition) remembered having seen him sitting there for forty years, it is a reasonable supposition that he was sixty-one years old. Many who never read his erudite and whimsical literary compositions will recall his tall, lean, stooped, scholarly figure as it crawled (alas! at times unsteadily, but never missing a pub.) from bar to tavern along the more obscure streets of our city, they will remember his cordial leer for the women, known to him or unknown, no matter what their ages, passed along the way; his uncouth propositions, advanced with naif charm, that spurious English accent, which he had acquired from reading P.G. Wodehouse in the original; his childlike glee when he moistened some friend's upholstry. It was no unusual thing to see him, arrive at a party with clothing disarranged, toss his muffins into the lap of the hostess: and many recall his ingratiating smile of apology as he rose to his feet after crashing through an antique table. " Fragile thing, what?" was his riposte on this occasion. All will miss him. Bartenders have said that he was wittier in conversation than in his literary output. This is difficult for us to believe; and closer questioning disclosed that these estimable gentlemen were not too familiar with Bentworthiana. Certainly quick at repartee; to coin a phrase--rapier-sharp with the mot juste (Fr. wise-crack) though he was, still his literary creations bubble like a freshly deluged alka-seltzer. Perhaps his most quoted verbal coinage is the recondite definition of love as a feeling of ecstacy between blood tests. (There is no truth to the story, once current, that Chastor flunked a Wasserman. On the one occasion when he had sufficient blood to spare enough for a test, its only ascertainable quality was a proof of 94.8. There were no abnormalities except for a trace of French Vermouth. At the time, science doubted that the stuff from his veins was blood.) There are extant many examples of his conversational facility, of his ready with. Sometimes, simply, he belched. One story of quick retort must be told. Once a bartender told him that he had one too many for that nonce, to go home and take a nap and that everything would be alright in the morning. What Chastor told that bartender to do is still repeated in quite salon corners, with appreciative chuckles, at more exclusive soires. Sharp, he was! He was quite the fellow, really! One wonders what Hollywood might have done with the work of Thomas Bentworth. (46)