Happy birthday Emperor Norton
I am just fed up with the air of doom and gloom among my fellow Republican political bloggers right now and was thinking of something light-hearted to post. Then I remembered this post that I did two years ago.
One of San Francisco's most famous citizens was Emperor Norton. When I first heard about Emperor Norton, soon after arriving in San Francisco nearly 30 years ago, I did not know that he was a fellow South African.
Joshua Abraham Norton was born on February 14th, 1819. He lived in Algoa Bay in South Africa where his father was a prosperous merchant. When he was 30 he decided to come to California during the Gold Rush and arrived in San Francisco aboard the Dutch schooner, Franzika, in 1849. Norton did not go searching for gold but instead decided to follow in his father's footsteps and go into business as a merchant. He had come to America with a nest egg of thirty thousand dollars, with which he opened a business selling supplies to gold miners. He prospered and started buying up the land that would eventually become San Francisco’s Cow Hollow district.
By 1855, Norton was one of the most respected businessmen in San Francisco. Because of his large real estate holdings, his friends started referring to him as “Emperor.” It was at this time that he hit on idea of cornering San Francisco’s rice market. The city’s large Chinese population were a ready market. In those days the only way rice (or almost anything else) arrived was aboard cargo steamships. Investors were quick to sign on. But this venture failed when two ships full of rice arrived in San Francisco and undercut his market.
Norton spent the next three years in court, and emerged penniless in 1858. Then he disappeared for about nine months. There is no record of where he went. He returned suddenly in the late summer of 1859, proudly walking the streets in a beaver hat and navel regalia. His behaviour was so eccentric that people began to say that he had gone mad. That September, he walked into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin and presented them with this single sentence, which they ran on the next edition’s front page:
Norton I ruled by proclamation, and it didn’t seem to upset him if not all his edicts were carried out. If taxes or water rates were too high, he commanded that they be lowered. If there were inadequacies in the city services, he ordered improvements. On the eve of the Civil War he temporarily dissolved the Union. After the Prussian victory in 1872, he ordered a week of continuous celebration and thanksgiving. Bay Area newspapers competed for the honor of posting his proclamations, and more than once they devised fakes to generate sales and interest, a practice against which the Emperor railed angrily.
Few monarchs ever had Norton’s common touch; he abjured seclusion and luxury. He attended every public function or meeting, always arriving by foot or bicycle rather than coach, and performed daily rounds of his capitol’s streets, making sure the police were on their beats, and that cleanliness, harmony and order prevailed. If he noticed someone performing some kind act or other, he might spontaneously ennoble them, from which practice the expression “Queen for a day” was obtained. (Of course that title has come to mean something entirely different in San Francisco nowadays.) The titles were especially popular with children, who would follow him in groups, looking everywhere for litter to pick up or old ladies to help across the street.
Norton’s personal expenses were few. He ate free of charge at whatever restaurant suited him. After he visited an establishment, the owners were permitted to post a sign: "By Appointment to His Majesty Emperor, Joshua Norton I." Invariably, these "appointments" brought great business to the saloon or restaurant so graced. He had three seats reserved for him at every opera and theater performance (one for himself and one each for his famously well-behaved dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.)
The city itself actually paid for his uniforms and the local Masonic Lodge paid for his small apartment. Nonetheless, whenever necessary, Norton had his own currency printed, which was accepted everywhere without question which was surprising because, at that time, U.S. paper money was still regarded with distrust in California. He also had the option of levying taxes, for which his normal procedure was to walk into the offices of an old business friend and politely announce an imperial assessment of ten million or so dollars, but he could usually be talked down to two or three dollars, or perhaps a cigar.
Still though, this wasn’t really legal, and feelings towards Norton I amongst the police were rather mixed. In January of 1867, in fact, he was arrested by an overzealous policeman “to be confined for treatment of a mental disorder,” and held at the police station pending a hearing. The public outrage was immediate. Every newspaper editorial denounced the action and there was the real possibility of a riot. Chief of Police, Patrick Crowley, himself opened the cell doors and issued a lengthy public apology to the Emperor. Norton himself was magnanimous about the whole affair and from then on his relations with the police became much more congenial. He led their annual parades and inspected the new cadets; members of what he now called his Imperial Constabulary saluted him when he passed.
Norton I was a great believer in progress and innovation, and many of his ideas, for which he was sometimes regarded as mad, have become realities. He issued numerous proclamations proposing and then finally commanding the construction of a suspension bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland, complete with his own design sketches. His planned San Francisco terminus is within a block of where the Bay Bridge abuts now, and a plaque on it bears testimony to his foresight. He was also convinced that travel by air would one day become common and commissioned panels of researchers and designers to create plans for airships.
The Emperor called for a world of leisure and creativity, a country of the mind without borders, in which all were engaged in their most creative work. Waiters and busboys would present lectures and philosophers would clean tables. ("I could argue all day about the significance of facing east in religious rituals, but a clean table is a clean table.") He inspired scientists and engineers to draw up plans for great civic projects, mile-high buildings, gigantic ocean-going balloons propelled by bicyclists, a network of tubes beneath the city to speed postal deliveries. The plans themselves were considered to be great works of art, and exhibitions drew great throngs. Alas, all records of these plans were lost in the great fire after the earthquake of 1906.
Perhaps the most unusual contribution of Emperor Norton to the city's history was the Modern Aires orchestra; an orchestra composed entirely of recently-invented instruments, such as the bailerophone, the saxophone, and the onmiphone. Although performances were almost painfully cacophonous, San Francisco's citizens flocked to them, laughing and holding their hands over their ears as necessary. Since many of these instruments were so new no one knew how they should sound, the orchestra was different for almost every performance; it was not an uncommon sight for musicians and audience to change places during the course of a program.
Emperor Norton wore a blue military uniform with tarnished gold-plated epaulets, which had been given him by the officers at the Presidio United States Army post, and a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather and a rosette, and he always carried both a cane and an umbrella. When his uniform began to look shabby, the Board of Supervisors, with a great deal of ceremony, appropriated enough money to buy him another, for which the Emperor sent them a gracious note of thanks and a patent of nobility in perpetuity for each Supervisor.
He sent frequent cables to fellow rulers, offering surprisingly well-informed advice or reflecting on the complex responsibilities of rulership. Many of the responses he got were in fact forgeries, created by his friends to make him happy, but many were not. King Kamehameha of Hawaii (known then as the Sandwich Isles) was so taken with the Emperor’s insight and understanding that towards the end of his life he refused to recognize the U.S. State Department, saying he would deal only with representatives of the Emperor.
Norton I died quite suddenly of "apoplexy," on January 8th, 1880, at the corner of California and Grant, on his way to a scientific conference. He left no heir. He left an estate comprising a two-and-a-half dollar gold piece, three dollars in silver, a franc piece of 1828, and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine.
San Francisco went into a period of deep mourning for three days. Ten thousand people from every walk of life lined up to view his mortal remains and his funeral cortege was two miles long. At 2:39 p.m. that day, during his funeral, San Francisco experienced a total eclipse of the sun. Fifty-four years later, Norton’s coffin was re-interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma (a small town south of San Francisco known as the City of the Dead because of all the cemeteries.) Once again, flags throughout the city were lowered and businesses closed their doors. About sixty thousand people attended the ceremony, which was accompanied by full military honors and taps.
Pic one: Norton at the age of 35 when he was at the height of his financial success.
Pic two: Norton, when he first returned after disappearing for nine months.
Pic three: a formal portrait of the Emperor.
Pic four: a cartoon of Norton helping himself to dinner watched by his devoted dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.
One of San Francisco's most famous citizens was Emperor Norton. When I first heard about Emperor Norton, soon after arriving in San Francisco nearly 30 years ago, I did not know that he was a fellow South African.
Joshua Abraham Norton was born on February 14th, 1819. He lived in Algoa Bay in South Africa where his father was a prosperous merchant. When he was 30 he decided to come to California during the Gold Rush and arrived in San Francisco aboard the Dutch schooner, Franzika, in 1849. Norton did not go searching for gold but instead decided to follow in his father's footsteps and go into business as a merchant. He had come to America with a nest egg of thirty thousand dollars, with which he opened a business selling supplies to gold miners. He prospered and started buying up the land that would eventually become San Francisco’s Cow Hollow district.
By 1855, Norton was one of the most respected businessmen in San Francisco. Because of his large real estate holdings, his friends started referring to him as “Emperor.” It was at this time that he hit on idea of cornering San Francisco’s rice market. The city’s large Chinese population were a ready market. In those days the only way rice (or almost anything else) arrived was aboard cargo steamships. Investors were quick to sign on. But this venture failed when two ships full of rice arrived in San Francisco and undercut his market.
Norton spent the next three years in court, and emerged penniless in 1858. Then he disappeared for about nine months. There is no record of where he went. He returned suddenly in the late summer of 1859, proudly walking the streets in a beaver hat and navel regalia. His behaviour was so eccentric that people began to say that he had gone mad. That September, he walked into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin and presented them with this single sentence, which they ran on the next edition’s front page:
At the peremtory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the past nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States, and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of this city, on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.That day people on the streets of San Francisco began greeting Norton with deep bows and curtsies.
Norton I
Emperor of the United States
September 17th, 1859
Norton I ruled by proclamation, and it didn’t seem to upset him if not all his edicts were carried out. If taxes or water rates were too high, he commanded that they be lowered. If there were inadequacies in the city services, he ordered improvements. On the eve of the Civil War he temporarily dissolved the Union. After the Prussian victory in 1872, he ordered a week of continuous celebration and thanksgiving. Bay Area newspapers competed for the honor of posting his proclamations, and more than once they devised fakes to generate sales and interest, a practice against which the Emperor railed angrily.
Few monarchs ever had Norton’s common touch; he abjured seclusion and luxury. He attended every public function or meeting, always arriving by foot or bicycle rather than coach, and performed daily rounds of his capitol’s streets, making sure the police were on their beats, and that cleanliness, harmony and order prevailed. If he noticed someone performing some kind act or other, he might spontaneously ennoble them, from which practice the expression “Queen for a day” was obtained. (Of course that title has come to mean something entirely different in San Francisco nowadays.) The titles were especially popular with children, who would follow him in groups, looking everywhere for litter to pick up or old ladies to help across the street.
Norton’s personal expenses were few. He ate free of charge at whatever restaurant suited him. After he visited an establishment, the owners were permitted to post a sign: "By Appointment to His Majesty Emperor, Joshua Norton I." Invariably, these "appointments" brought great business to the saloon or restaurant so graced. He had three seats reserved for him at every opera and theater performance (one for himself and one each for his famously well-behaved dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.)
The city itself actually paid for his uniforms and the local Masonic Lodge paid for his small apartment. Nonetheless, whenever necessary, Norton had his own currency printed, which was accepted everywhere without question which was surprising because, at that time, U.S. paper money was still regarded with distrust in California. He also had the option of levying taxes, for which his normal procedure was to walk into the offices of an old business friend and politely announce an imperial assessment of ten million or so dollars, but he could usually be talked down to two or three dollars, or perhaps a cigar.
Still though, this wasn’t really legal, and feelings towards Norton I amongst the police were rather mixed. In January of 1867, in fact, he was arrested by an overzealous policeman “to be confined for treatment of a mental disorder,” and held at the police station pending a hearing. The public outrage was immediate. Every newspaper editorial denounced the action and there was the real possibility of a riot. Chief of Police, Patrick Crowley, himself opened the cell doors and issued a lengthy public apology to the Emperor. Norton himself was magnanimous about the whole affair and from then on his relations with the police became much more congenial. He led their annual parades and inspected the new cadets; members of what he now called his Imperial Constabulary saluted him when he passed.
Norton I was a great believer in progress and innovation, and many of his ideas, for which he was sometimes regarded as mad, have become realities. He issued numerous proclamations proposing and then finally commanding the construction of a suspension bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland, complete with his own design sketches. His planned San Francisco terminus is within a block of where the Bay Bridge abuts now, and a plaque on it bears testimony to his foresight. He was also convinced that travel by air would one day become common and commissioned panels of researchers and designers to create plans for airships.
The Emperor called for a world of leisure and creativity, a country of the mind without borders, in which all were engaged in their most creative work. Waiters and busboys would present lectures and philosophers would clean tables. ("I could argue all day about the significance of facing east in religious rituals, but a clean table is a clean table.") He inspired scientists and engineers to draw up plans for great civic projects, mile-high buildings, gigantic ocean-going balloons propelled by bicyclists, a network of tubes beneath the city to speed postal deliveries. The plans themselves were considered to be great works of art, and exhibitions drew great throngs. Alas, all records of these plans were lost in the great fire after the earthquake of 1906.
Perhaps the most unusual contribution of Emperor Norton to the city's history was the Modern Aires orchestra; an orchestra composed entirely of recently-invented instruments, such as the bailerophone, the saxophone, and the onmiphone. Although performances were almost painfully cacophonous, San Francisco's citizens flocked to them, laughing and holding their hands over their ears as necessary. Since many of these instruments were so new no one knew how they should sound, the orchestra was different for almost every performance; it was not an uncommon sight for musicians and audience to change places during the course of a program.
Emperor Norton wore a blue military uniform with tarnished gold-plated epaulets, which had been given him by the officers at the Presidio United States Army post, and a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather and a rosette, and he always carried both a cane and an umbrella. When his uniform began to look shabby, the Board of Supervisors, with a great deal of ceremony, appropriated enough money to buy him another, for which the Emperor sent them a gracious note of thanks and a patent of nobility in perpetuity for each Supervisor.
He sent frequent cables to fellow rulers, offering surprisingly well-informed advice or reflecting on the complex responsibilities of rulership. Many of the responses he got were in fact forgeries, created by his friends to make him happy, but many were not. King Kamehameha of Hawaii (known then as the Sandwich Isles) was so taken with the Emperor’s insight and understanding that towards the end of his life he refused to recognize the U.S. State Department, saying he would deal only with representatives of the Emperor.
Norton I died quite suddenly of "apoplexy," on January 8th, 1880, at the corner of California and Grant, on his way to a scientific conference. He left no heir. He left an estate comprising a two-and-a-half dollar gold piece, three dollars in silver, a franc piece of 1828, and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine.
San Francisco went into a period of deep mourning for three days. Ten thousand people from every walk of life lined up to view his mortal remains and his funeral cortege was two miles long. At 2:39 p.m. that day, during his funeral, San Francisco experienced a total eclipse of the sun. Fifty-four years later, Norton’s coffin was re-interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma (a small town south of San Francisco known as the City of the Dead because of all the cemeteries.) Once again, flags throughout the city were lowered and businesses closed their doors. About sixty thousand people attended the ceremony, which was accompanied by full military honors and taps.
Pic one: Norton at the age of 35 when he was at the height of his financial success.
Pic two: Norton, when he first returned after disappearing for nine months.
Pic three: a formal portrait of the Emperor.
Pic four: a cartoon of Norton helping himself to dinner watched by his devoted dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.
posted by Joubert at 7:20 PM
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