Celebrated Humorist in 1871: Emperor Norton Is Among “The Geniuses That Frisco Has Sent Broadcast to the World"

Grouped With Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Charles Warren Stoddard — As Well as With Other Literary Lights Better Known At the Time Than They Are Today

ONE COULD say that he was a kind of “Renaissance entertainer.”

Born in England and arriving in New York in 1837, Stephen Charnock Massett (1819–1898) is described by the Maritime History Project as having been

the true Bohemian type…[A]n artist, with an equal capacity for work and diversion…[he had] a wealth of copper-colored curls, a heavy mustache and goatee, a face full and mobile, with the nose of the philosopher and the eyes of the dreamer. He was poet-actor, song and dance artist, composer, essayist, lawyer, auctioneer, notary public, and "wandering minstrel in many lands."

Called “Steve” by his friends, Massett was indeed an inveterate traveler — and, it was his travels that launched him into the public imagination. In 1843, he began to write up his adventures in a popular series of articles that ran for many years in the New-York Spirit of the Times newspaper.

Cabinet card of Stephen Massett, undated. Photograph by the Bradley & Rulofson studio. The verso of the card shows the studio’s address as 429 Montgomery Street, where it was located between 1863 and 1878; so, the portrait will have been made sometime during this 15-year period. Collection of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. Source: Calisphere

In January 1849, Massett set out for San Francisco, arriving in April of that year.

A short two months later, on 22 June 1849, Massett gave a performance, at the schoolhouse on the southwest corner of Portsmouth Place, that often is credited as the first professional concert in San Francisco — although “concert” isn’t quite the right term; there were songs, including Massett’s own, but these were generously interspersed with dramatic recitations and humorous impressions.

Massett remained in San Francisco for two years before decamping in 1851 to Marysville, Calif., where he had purchased an ownership interest in the Marysville Herald newspaper.

It was during Massett’s second San Francisco residency, 1853–56, that he acquired the property with which he would be associated for the rest of his life.

In 1854, Massett purchased — apparently sight unseen — some marshy land in the area now bounded by Market, Mission, 7th, and 8th Streets.

As it turned out, the property included a kind of “shack on stilts” that Massett improved and made his home. He called the place “Pipesville.”

Shortly after that, Massett adopted as his pen and stage name “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville.”

Here’s the caricature of Massett, with Pipesville, that he included in his 1863 autobiography Drifting About, or, What “Jeem Pipes of Pipesville” Saw-and-Did.

Reportedly, Massett really did fly a “Pipesville” banner from his house.

Caricature of Stephen Massett as Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville. Frontispiece for Masset’s autobiography, Drifting About, or, What “Jeem Pipes of Pipesville” Saw-and-Did (1863). Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. Source: Internet Archive

Here’s another view of Pipesville — a undated painting done during Massett’s lifetime.

Crayon sketch of Pipesville, undated but produced during Stephen Massett’s lifetime. Illustration for article, “Jeems Pipes of Pipesville,” San Francisco Chronicle, 18 June 1916, p. 28. Source: Newspapers.com

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IN 1856, Stephen Massett left San Francisco for Australia — returning to the city in 1859.

But, this was a brief visit. Based on a review of city directories, Massett did not put down stakes in San Francisco again until 1868.

It appears that Massett was traveling again for much of 1869 and 1870. But, the San Francisco directory of 1871 found him back in the listings — living at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

In April of 1871, Massett penned a column that appeared in San Francisco’s Daily Alta newspaper. The byline was “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville” — and that, in itself, appears to have been rare. Although Massett was well-known by this sobriquet, there was but a tiny handful of newspaper columns that carried this byline.

In the column itself, “A Tale of Two Cities,” Massett laid out — in humorous fashion — the comparative virtues of San Francisco and Chicago.

In the course of explaining why San Francisco had the clear edge, Massett pointed to the city’s cultural exports:

Excerpt from “A Tale of Two Cities,” column by Stephen Massett writing under his pen name “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville,” Daily Alta California, 24 April 1871, p. 4. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

Rounding out Massett’s list of “the geniuses that Frisco has sent broadcast to the world” is “the Emperor Norton.”

Massett’s list includes Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad) and two members of Twain’s inner circle: Bret Harte (The Heathen Chinee, a satire of anti-Chinese sentiment) and Charles Warren Stoddard.

Massett also mentions a number of writers who would have been known to his readers in 1871, if (almost certainly) obscure to most people today — including: travel writer J. Ross Browne; George Derby a.k.a. “John P. Squibob” or “John Phoenix” (Phoenixiana); poet Edward Pollock; writer and editor Charles Henry Webb, co-founder, with Harte, of the magazine The Californian and publisher of Twain’s first book, the short story collection The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches; and San Francisco Chronicle correspondent Maria Percival Robbins, who wrote under the pseudonym Mary Jane Simpson.

Had “Jeems Pipes” had occasion to meet Emperor Norton before writing his 1871 column — or, did he know the Emperor only by reputation?

Certainly, Emperor Norton must have known about him — not least, because Massett was on the San Francisco scene for much of the period between 1849 and 1856, when Joshua Norton was finding, and losing, his way in the city.

And, it’s more than possible that the two did meet at some point after Joshua declared himself Emperor in 1859.

The San Francisco directory of 1868 listed Massett’s business address as 605 Clay Street. This was on the southwest corner of Montgomery and Clay — just a half-block and around the corner from Emperor Norton’s digs at 624 Commercial.

Massett continued to travel extensively in the 1870s. But, he was listed in 5 of the 8 San Francisco directories between between 1871 and 1878. This suggests that — even if Massett was not one to “stay put” for long, and even if he spent more time “away” than “home” during the years he was listed as a San Francisco resident — he still might have been in the city frequently enough during these years to run into the Emp on the street or perhaps at one of his many local performances.

Stephen Massett’s last San Francisco directory listing was in 1878. It appears that, by 1881, Massett had “re-adopted” New York City — where he got his American start in the 1830s and ‘40s — as his home base. It was here, in Manhattan, that he would die in August 1898.

Whether or not Stephen Massett and Emperor Norton ever met, Massett is to be thanked for naming the Emperor a “genius” and placing him in such good “Frisco” company in April 1871.

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