The Time Emperor Norton Was a "Pepper" Too
A Ghostly Premonition in Sacramento
EVER see a Pepper’s ghost?
Even if the term Pepper’s ghost is unfamiliar, you almost certainly have seen one. The Pepper’s ghost is the reflective illusion that lies at the heart of both the teleprompter and the Haunted Mansion attraction at the Disney theme parks.
Although the Pepper’s ghost effect is likened to — and often called — a “hologram,” it is a completely different phenomenon from that, for technical reasons that are well beyond the scope of this article to explain. (But, the Wikipedia entry is a good primer.)
Over the last couple of years, San Francisco-based artist Josh Ellingson — a friend of The Emperor Norton Trust — has become deeply interested in the expressive possibilities of the Pepper’s ghost illusion. Ellingson has produced a wonderful series of Pepper’s ghost experiments using vintage televisions, video monitors, smartphones and glass domes (bell jars) of various sizes — and employing synthesizers to manipulate the movements of the reflected images.
To provide a mental picture of what a Pepper’s ghost is, here’s one of Ellingson’s videos:
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ONE could be forgiven for thinking that the Pepper’s ghost illusion must have been discovered and developed in the twentieth century.
In fact, the earliest theoretical antecedent of the illusion might be the description published by the Neapolitan scientist Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615) in his work Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), published more than three centuries earlier, in 1589.
John Henry Pepper (1821–1900), c.1870. Carte de visite photograph by Henry Maull (1829–1914). Source: Wikipedia
The Pepper’s ghost effect really burst on the scene, though, in the early 1860s. Over the decade or so before this, a number of innovators had been trying to perfect the illusion — to make it both persuasive and scalable. One of these innovators was the director of the Royal Polytechnic Institute, in London: John Henry Pepper (1821–1900).
On Christmas Eve 1862, Pepper introduced his own innovation as part of the Polytechnic’s theatrical production of a Charles Dickens story, The Haunted Man.
With this performance, it was clear that Pepper had the breakthrough. After that, it was Pepper who popularized the illusion. And, it is Pepper who is memorialized in the name of the effect: Pepper’s ghost.
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THE EXAMPLES of “Pepper’s” reflection illusion that caught the public’s imagination in the late nineteenth century were performed in large-scale theatrical settings in which the ghostly images of live actors hidden from the view of the audience were lighted, reflected and “cast” up onto the stage.
The following illustration published in a French magazine in 1865 gives a sense of how audiences of the day tried to understand and explain what was going on:
By the early 1870s, Pepper’s ghost performances were showing up in American sideshows — and, in 1877, there was a U.S. patent for the illusion.
It’s against this backdrop that, in late December 1879, the resident company of the Metropolitan Theater in Sacramento, Calif., staged a brief series of shows of what it called “the Pepper Mystery,” or “Pepper’s Mystery.”
The following ad from the Sacramento Daily Record–Union of 26 December 1879 promises:
SCIENTIFIC WONDERS!
STARTLING ILLUSIONS
COMIC!! DIABOLICAL!!
GHOSTS!
HEADLESS BODIES!
BODILESS HEADS!
FLOATING VISIONS, ETC.
Notice, about halfway down the ad, what other “Mystery” is on the menu of Pepper’s illusions for the evening of December 26th…
Ad for “Pepper’s Mystery” performance featuring “the dissolving of Eureka into Emperor Norton,” Metropolitan Theater (Sacramento, Calif.), Sacramento Daily Record–Union, 27 December 1879, p. 5. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
According to the following item from the same Sacramento paper, a highlight of “the dissolving of Eureka into Emperor Norton” was to be the costuming and make-up of the stage manager, George Stevens, as the Emperor.
Editorial on the performance of “Pepper Mystery” illusions at the Metropolitan Theater (Sacramento, Calif.), Sacramento Daily Record–Union, 26 December 1879, p. 3. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
Left unstated is how “Eureka” was portrayed by the thespians of the Metropolitan Theater. But, let’s make the reasonable assumption that “Eureka” was meant to represent California. Was the morphing of California into Emperor Norton done entirely for comic effect — or was there also a sentimental note to the performance?
Emperor Norton would be gone 13 days later, on 8 January 1880. Was the Emperor believed to be in failing health? Did someone at the Metropolitan catch wind of this? Was the performance conceived, in part, as a tribute to a fading legend? Was the dramatization of the living Emperor Norton as a ghost-figure at one with the spirit of California later seen as an eery foreshadowing of the Emperor’s passing?
Perhaps, for some who performed or witnessed the illusion, this particular ghostly effect acquired new poignant significance when the Emperor died two weeks later.
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