Whither the Emperor Norton Memorabilia in the Wells Fargo Collection?

December 10, 2024 / John Lumea

Last week, Wells Fargo announced that, in connection with its plan to move its headquarters to a new location in San Francisco, the company will sell its longtime headquarters building at 420 Montgomery Street and close the Wells Fargo Museum there.

This raises the uneasy question of what is to become of a number of significant Emperor Norton-related artifacts in the Wells Fargo collection — including at least two of the Emperor’s signed promissory notes and a rare statuette of the Emperor made in 1877. One of the notes has been on display at the Museum for years.

Wells Fargo has kept these items in its care for decades, even generations — for which the bank deserves thanks.

But, in order to preserve and even increase access to these Norton artifacts by researchers and the public, Wells Fargo now should donate them to one or more San Francisco institutions that (a) are dedicated to collecting, archiving, and presenting San Francisco historical resources, and that (b) have the capacity to make these artifacts available for inspection by researchers and occasional exhibition viewing by the public.

Two obvious candidates are the San Francisco History Center (at the San Francisco Public Library) and the San Francisco Historical Society.

There is nothing wrong with a change of stewardship for these Norton artifacts. But, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

If Wells Fargo does decide to relinquish its Norton artifacts, whether by donating them or selling them, the dispensation should be a matter of record — so that information about these items doesn't get orphaned and the items themselves effectively "disappeared."

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categories / Commentary, Legacy
tags / Wells Fargo Museum, Wells Fargo History Room, Wells Fargo, artifacts, ephemera, promissory note, statuette, preservation, public access, research, 1877, 1878, 1935, 1962, 1978, 1986

Seeing 1852 Joshua Norton in a 1930 Song from a Brecht Play

December 04, 2024 / John Lumea

For those attuned to the story of Joshua Norton’s December 1852 attempt to corner the San Francisco rice market, a Weimar-era song with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Hanns Eisler should harbor clear echoes.

The song, “Supply and Demand,” appears in Brecht’s play The Measures Taken (or The Decision) that first was performed in Berlin in December 1930.

The song is voiced by the character of the Trader, who opens the song with a meditation on his amoral effort to turn a profit on…rice.

This look at “Supply and Demand” includes audio and video of four recordings and performances of the song between 1965 and 2022.

Also included: A rare c.1920 advertising photograph showing Brecht with other key figures of Weimar popular culture.

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categories / Research, Commentary
tags / Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, The Measures Taken (play), The Decision (play), Supply and Demand (song), trader, rice, English translation, translation, recording, performance, video, Eric Bentley, John Willett, Robyn Archer, Dagmar Krause, Bremner Fletcher Duthie, 1930, 1964, 1965, 1984, 1986, 1996, 2022

When Emperor Norton Became Protector of Mexico

October 18, 2024 / John Lumea

A certain conventional wisdom holds that Emperor Norton adopted the title "Protector of Mexico" around the time French emperor Napoleon III invaded Mexico in 1862 and installed his puppet ruler Maximilian I in 1864 — and that the Emperor dropped his "Protector" title a few years later.

The documentary record says otherwise.

Evidence suggests that Emperor Norton did not start using "Protector of Mexico" until early 1866, more than halfway into Maximilian’s tenure, but makes clear that he kept using the title — both to advocate for Mexico and for general purposes — for the rest of his life.

A surprising find: Norton I expanded his title to "Emperor of the United States and Mexico" in 1861.

By the time the Emperor assumed his protectorship of Mexico, he had relinquished his emperorship of that country.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / Mexico, Emperor of the United States and Mexico, Protector of Mexico, Napoleon III, Maximilian I, Robert Ernest Cowan, Albert Dressler, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, Emperor Norton Memorial Association, Woodlawn Cemetery, headstone, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1871, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1879, 1923, 1927, 1934, 1938, 1939, 1986

Scenes from the Emperor Norton Devotion of Melvin Belli

August 16, 2024 / John Lumea

The legendary San Francisco attorney Melvin Mouron Belli (1907–1996) was — among many other things — an enthusiast of the Emperor Norton.

No doubt, this — and Melvin Belli’s way with a pen — is why William Drury enlisted Belli to write the Foreword for his 1986 biography of the Emperor.

Throughout his very public life, Belli repeatedly and habitually associated himself with Emperor Norton.

As shown in the scenes documented here...

an Emperor Norton cosplayer who "knighted" Belli at the 1960 Belli-staged dedication of two Gold Rush-era buildings that Belli had restored — one of which he would use for his law office
Belli's own cosplaying of the Emperor for a San Francisco Examiner magazine feature in 1987
Belli's interviews comparing public birthday parties he threw for himself in 1982 and 1987 to imagined birthday celebrations for Emperor Norton in the Emperor's day

...Belli invoked the Emperor in ways that suggested a link between his fight for justice and his flair for the eccentric.

Indeed, Belli's Norton-flavored theatrics helped his audiences to see that — as with Emperor Norton — his own eccentricity was a key to his influence.

Click below for stories, photographs, newspaper clippings, and video.

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categories / Research, Places, Legacy, Original sources
tags / Melvin Belli, Belli Building, Genella Building, 722 Montgomery, 728 Montgomery, cosplay, cosplayer, Earle Wright, birthday party, Mike Douglas Show, San Francisco Examiner, William Drury, 1959, 1960, 1982, 1986, 1987

A Tale of Two Storeships

November 21, 2023 / John Lumea

For some eight decades, maybe more, the story has circulated in Emperor Norton biographies and in Nortonland more broadly that Joshua Norton owned the Genessee — the storeship that “received” the hundred tons of rice that Joshua’s firm bought off a ship in San Francisco Bay in December 1852.

According to this story, the Genessee was a major asset of Joshua Norton & Co., with the firm using the storeship as a warehouse and doing a brisk business in renting out space in the ship to other merchants.

In fact, the only contemporaneous documentation of a connection between Joshua Norton and the Genessee makes it very clear that Joshua was the renter. He did not own the Genessee — he simply rented warehouse space there, as many other traders and merchants did.

However, we recently uncovered a previously undocumented newspaper ad which suggests that — more than two years earlier, in August 1850 — Joshua Norton did lease space in a different storeship, the Orator, with the intention of sub-leasing this space to others.

Read on for documentation of the original arrivals of the Genessee and the Orator in San Francisco — of when these cargo / passenger ships were sold and converted into storeships — of how Joshua Norton’s path intersected with the Genessee and the Orator — and of these ships’ later fates.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / ship, storeship, Genessee, Orator, California Street Wharf, Ruiz v. Norton, California Supreme Court, James McCormic, Ferdinand Vassault, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1856, 1882, 1939, 1986

The Genesis of the Second "Joshua Norton & Co." of San Francisco

November 16, 2023 / John Lumea

Conventional wisdom holds that, when Joshua Norton arrived in San Francisco, he immediately found a business partner and established Joshua Norton & Co. — and that this firm operated continuously until the legal and financial fallout from Joshua’s prolonged rice contract dispute left him deserted and on his own.

But, a close reading of the newspaper record indicates that, during his first 3½ years in San Francisco, Joshua Norton alternated between periods of working with a partner (“& Co.”) and working as a sole proprietor — and that there were three distinct business partnerships that operated under the name “Joshua Norton & Co.”

The primary 20th-century biographers of Emperor Norton identify Joshua’s first business partner as Peter Robertson. But, our recent discovery of details that apparently were missed by these authors suggests that Joshua and Peter did not meet until nearly a year into Joshua’s San Francisco sojourn — and that they met at a time when the “original” Joshua Norton & Co. already had disappeared from view and Joshua was once again working solo.

The circumstantial evidence points to Peter Robertson as the partner in the second Joshua Norton & Co — not the first.

Read on for the full story.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Joshua Norton & Co., Peter Robertson, 242 Montgomery Street, Cross Hobson & Co., Sansome Street, Jackson Street, Pacific Street, William Sim, partner, partnership, newspaper, directory, advertisement, ad, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1939, 1986

The Pantheonic Statuette of Norton I

May 30, 2023 / John Lumea

It’s well known that souvenir photographs and lithographs of Emperor Norton were sold in San Francisco shops during the Emperor’s lifetime.

Norton biographer William Drury takes it considerably further to claim that, by the early 1870s, there was a whole cottage industry of “Emperor Norton statuettes, Emperor Norton dolls, Emperor Norton mugs and jugs, Emperor Norton Imperial Cigars” — and even that there were peddlers hawking Emperor Norton merch at his funeral.

I find no evidence to support much of what Drury asserts — but…

In 1877 — a couple of years before Emperor Norton died in 1880 — a German immigrant jeweler and sculptor in San Francisco created a highly accomplished statuette of the Emperor that deserves a much closer look than it has received.

Although there is no ready evidence that this nearly-two-foot-tall statuette was sold in shops, there is evidence to suggest that it was a fixture in San Francisco saloons — and even that the Emperor himself had a copy in his apartment.

Among other things, I document here the three known copies of the statuette and offer a glimpse into the life and work of the sculptor.

There even are cameo appearances from historians of Ancient Rome and the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a fascinating story, previously untold.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, ARENA
tags / Art, sculpture, statue, statuette, figurine, Herman J. Brand, Jonas Brand, jeweler, sculptor, plaster, medallion, token, charm, gold, saloon, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Society of California Pioneers, Wells Fargo History Museum, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, photograph, cabinet card, painting, lithograph, terra cotta, Pantheon, pantheonic, Rome, Oxford English Dictionary, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, 1906, 1921, 1930, 1935, 1939, 1986, 2021

A Funeral Cortege "Two Miles Long"? Not Really.

May 22, 2023 / John Lumea

In his 1986 book Norton I: Emperor of the United States (Dodd, Mead) — long regarded as the “standard biography” of Emperor Norton — William Drury indulges in some evidentiary sleight-of-hand to create the false impression that the cortege that followed the Emperor from his funeral site to his grave site was “two miles long.”

In the decades since the publication of Drury’s book, this “cortege claim” has become one of the most commonly deployed flourishes in the popular telling of the Emperor Norton story.

In fact, the most reliable and detailed eyewitness report published the day after the Emperor’s funeral indicates that, while the cortege route was about two miles long, the length of the cortege itself was maybe a half-block.

Also included here: The origins of the claim that “30,000” people viewed the Emperor lying in state — or even constituted the cortege — rather than the already-exceptional “10,000” reported the next day.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / funeral, cortege, Lockhart & Porter, 16 O'Farrell Street, Masonic Cemetery, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Daily Intelligencer, William Drury, Dodd Mead & Company, 1880, 1986

Did San Francisco City Government Really Buy Emperor Norton a New Suit?

May 18, 2022 / John Lumea

For nearly a century, one of the favored “chestnuts” served up in biographical accounts of Emperor Norton has been the claim that, when the Emperor’s uniform became tattered, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — the City’s elected government — bought him a new one.

It now appears that this undocumented story may have gotten its start in a little book about the Emperor that was published in the late 1920s — nearly 50 years after his death.

But, during the period of Emperor Norton’s reign, 1859–1880, neither San Francisco’s newspapers nor the City’s own Municipal Reports have any record of such official government largesse.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / uniform, regalia, regimentals, suit, coat, clothes, clothing, wardrobe, Board of Supervisors, Albert Dressler, Herbert Asbury, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1863, 1865, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1927, 1933, 1986

Bill Drury's "Emperor Norton Bridge" Petition of 1986

July 12, 2021 / John Lumea

The late Phil Frank is known and even beloved in Norton circles for a particular series of his Farley comics with which — between September and December 2004 — Frank sought to educate the San Francisco Chronicle’s readership about Emperor Norton while also taking up the cause of naming the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge after the Emp.

The series is credited with having built much of the momentum for the introduction and passage of a San Francisco Board of Supervisors resolution in December 2004 calling for the new Eastern section of the Bay Bridge to be named the Emperor Norton Bridge.

What appears to have escaped the notice of most Nortonians, even those who consider themselves “tuned in” on bridge matters, is that (a) Frank had weighed in on the “Emperor Norton Bridge” imperative 18 years earlier, with a shorter series of Farley comics published in October 1986 — and that (b) this earlier series was prompted by an “Emperor Norton Bridge” petition drive launched and advanced in 1986 by William Drury, whose new biography on the Emperor was being published, promoted and reviewed at the same time.

This “memory rescue” of a key moment in “Emperor Norton Bridge” advocacy includes archival audio of a 2004 NPR interview with Phil Frank, in which Frank references the earlier petition, as well as the complete — and rarely seen — series of Frank’s 1986 Farley comics that were inspired by the petition.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Bay Bridge, Tributes
tags / Emperor Norton Bridge, petition, William Drury, Bill Drury, Phil Frank, Farley, audio, 1986, 2004, 2013

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