The Latter-Day Twain-ification of an Early Theatrical Depiction of Emperor Norton
One Place Where Bill Drury Massaged the Facts in 1986
In reviewing William Drury’s new biography of Emperor Norton in July 1986, Harre Demoro — writing for the San Francisco Chronicle — likened Drury to an “official court biographer.”
One has the impression that this was intended as a back-handed compliment.
I often have praised Drury’s book as having a more historical — and more historicizing — approach to the Emperor than his predecessors.
But, the key word there is “more.”
Did Mark Twain say to “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”? The jury is out on that quote. But, it appears that Bill Drury had internalized the premise.
Here’s an example from pages 69–70 of Drury’s book [emphases mine]:
A local playwright whose name is unknown was the first to see Norton as a subject for the stage. On September 17, 1861, a new theater opened its doors with a comic opera titled Norton the First. The daily papers made no mention of it, but The Golden Era, a weekly literary journal, found space among its serialized romances, poetry, recipes, and execrable jokes for a paragraph of praise:
ACADEMY OF MUSIC — The new melodeon at Tucker's Hall is among the most popular places of resort in the city. An original burlesque entitled “Norton the First" or "An Emperor for a Day" is now being played nightly, creating roars of irrepressible laughter. Walter Bray enacts Norton I, making up his part very effectively and clothing the character with his inexhaustible fund of comicalities. The whole dramatic company is enlisted in this musical extravaganza.
The "extravaganza" occupied the second half of a program that began with an hour of song and banter with banjos by the soot-blackened cast of Monsieur and Madame Schwegerle's Terpsichorean and Negro Minstrel Troupe, whose most notable contribution to the evening's entertainment was a rousing new square dance called "The Turkey in the Straw."
The date is worth noticing. That September 17 happened to be the second anniversary of the day Norton proclaimed himself Emperor. This coincidence is so remarkable it is tempting to suppose that the manager might have chosen this particular play for the opening of his theater to induce His Majesty to attend. Perhaps he thought his presence would attract some attention in the press, though it is fairly safe to say that Norton would have declined any invitation to see a farce that merely made sport of him.
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SO, DID Tucker’s Academy of Music a.k.a. Tucker’s Hall really open on 17 September 1861, the second anniversary of Emperor Norton’s self-declaration on 17 September 1859, with a “comic opera” about the Emperor?
Did the stars really line up like that?
In a word: No.
In fact, Tucker’s Academy opened at Montgomery Street, between Pine and California, a year-and-a-half earlier, on 15 February 1860 — as one can see from the following item that appeared that day in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin:
Item on Tucker’s Academy of Music, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 15 February 1860, p. 3. Source: GenealogyBank
The “Musical Hall” that the Bulletin references here in the past tense is the same one to which Emperor Norton, in his original Proclamation of 17 September 1859, had summoned “the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble…on the 1st day of February” of 1860 — only to have the place burn down on January 23rd.
This may be a reason why Tucker’s rushed to open before the hall was completely finished. Indeed, it would not be surprising to learn that several of Tucker’s earliest engagements were concerts that originally had been scheduled for Musical Hall but suddenly found themselves without a venue.
A few weeks after the opening, the following review of the new hall, apparently reprinted from the Morning Call, appeared in the verbosely named California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences:
Item on Tucker’s Academy of Music (probably reprinted from the San Francisco Morning Call), California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences, 9 March 1860, p. 36. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
The “Mr. Barbier [in] charge of the ticket department” is the same Armand Barbier who seven years later, in January 1867, would arrest Emperor Norton on bogus charges of vagrancy and lunacy.
In fact, the San Francisco directory of 1860 lists Barbier’s “special policeman” gig as his second job.
Listing for Armand Barbier, Langley’s San Francisco directory, 1860, p. 59. Source: Internet Archive
Alas, the Morning Call’s depiction of Armand Barbier as one whose “amenity and gentlemanly deportment always insure to the visitors of the establishment a just consideration” doesn’t jibe with Barbier’s officious, overzealous treatment of the Emp. Maybe, Barbier was a “good cop” at the Academy of Music but put on his “bad cop” hat when he went on patrol?
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AS TO THE Emperor Norton burlesque that opened at Tucker’s Academy of Music a year-and-a-half later…
The newspaper item that William Drury adapts and quotes from did appear in the weekly Golden Era in September of 1861. The notice ran on the 22nd:
Listing for Academy of Music (Tucker’s Hall), The Golden Era, 22 September 1861, p. 4, col. 6. Source: Google News
This item doesn’t mention when the show opened. But, it’s reasonable to suppose that, if Bill Drury — who was a newspaper man — saw this item, he also was curious enough to look for, and find, the item from the previous issue of The Golden Era — the one in which, on September 15th, the paper advised readers that the show would be opening “to-morrow evening,” i.e., the 16th.
Listing for Academy of Music (Tucker’s Hall), The Golden Era, 15 September 1861, p. 4, col. 6. Source: Google News
The addition of a melodeon — a relatively portable pump organ — at Tucker’s Hall could suggest that there was a shift in programming — which is to say, business strategy — during this period.
The hall’s earliest newspaper ads show that, in 1860 and the first half of 1861, the hall specialized in concert recitals, balls, lectures and sermons — not the sorts of offerings that would have garnered the Academy of Music a reputation as the “caterers of amusement to the laughter-loving citizens of our metropolis” that The Golden Era celebrated in its 15 September 1861 listing.
But, the melodeon was the featured instrument at “resorts” like the Bella Union that specialized in exactly this sort of entertainment: music hall, minstrel and variety shows with broad appeal to the masses.
So — for Tucker’s Hall — the “musical extravaganza” of Norton the First, or, Emperor for a Day, could indeed have been an early foray into this genre.
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THE GOLDEN ERA’S listing for the Academy of Music in its issue of 29 September 1861 doesn’t mention the Norton show — which suggests that the show must have closed sometime during the week of September 22nd (and probably wasn’t meant to last any longer than that).
Is it a matter of passing interest that the show was performed on September 17th — the second anniversary of Emperor Norton original Proclamation, on 17 September 1859? Sure.
But…
Why did Bill Drury feel the need to fudge September 17th as the opening of the show, when it appears to have opened on the 16th?
Why did Drury concoct an entire history for the Academy of Music that had the hall itself opening on 17 September 1861 — when clearly it had been a going concern for a year-and-a-half?
Why couldn’t Drury resist putting his “special sauce” all over everything, rather than simply reporting what was documented?
It’s an irony that Drury openly ridicules earlier Norton biographers Albert Dressler, Robert Ernest Cowan and Allen Stanley Lane for being so gullible as to swallow the fake story — originally published by the Oakland Daily News as a proclamation of Emperor Norton himself — that the Emperor decreed a bridge from Oakland to Sausalito to the Farallones.
Indeed, we have Drury to thank for digging out Emperor Norton’s more reliable “bridge Proclamations” and for putting future historians of the Emperor on better footing on this.
But, like those earlier writers, Drury shows us in his telling of the 1861 theater episode and elsewhere in his book that he respects history to a point — the “point” being different for each writer — but that, after that, he entitles himself to lead us all down a Twain-ish garden path.
Why, for example, does Drury single out Messrs. Dressler, Cowan and Lane for personal shaming — but lets David Warren Ryder, perhaps the biggest Norton fibber of them all, off the hook?
Could it be because Ryder originated the anti-”Frisco” proclamation myth in 1939, and Drury wanted to give that myth more legs — as he does in his book?
To his credit, Bill Drury has more restraint than earlier writers.
But, it’s good to be aware that Drury too has feet of clay and that he — like them — must be double-checked again and again and again and again.
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