Herb Caen Bought the Myth that Bummer and Lazarus Were Emperor Norton's Dogs
Or At Least He Was Happy to Repeat the Tale For Nearly 40 Years
ONE OF the more stubbornly held tenets of the Emperor Norton faith is the contention that Bummer and Lazarus, the famous San Francisco canines of the 1860s, were the Emperor’s dogs.
As Malcolm E. Barker (b. 1933) points out in the Introduction to the original 1984 edition of his essential little book, Bummer & Lazarus: San Francisco’s Famous Dogs, there is no evidence for this:
Emperor Norton was in the public eye for twenty-one years; Bummer and Lazarus for only five. Whereas today’s newspapers often retell Norton’s story in detail, they usually dismiss the dogs in a few words, often linking them with Norton. Nowhere do I find any contemporary account making such a connection. I believe they had no more royal affiliation than did the dozen or so other characters who were tolerated by their fellow San Franciscans in those days: people like The Guttersnipe, George Washington II, The Money King, The Great Unknown, Oofty Goofty, and The Fat Boy.
Undoubtedly what has caused the confusion are the numerous lithographs drawn by Edward Jump, a young French-born caricaturist who was living in California at the time. Although Jump also drew many of the other notabilities, he invariably gave prominence to the Emperor and the two dogs. His most famous drawing depicts Norton eating at the free lunch counter of one of the local saloons, while Bummer and Lazarus stand nearby, obviously hoping to share the feast. The Emperor was not amused when he saw it displayed in the window of a stationery store for, according to a report in the Daily Alta California on February 14, 1863:
he let fly his walking stick at the window pane and smashed — his stick. The window glass being the stronger, did not break, and the owner of the store coming to the door to quell the disturbance, His Imperial Majesty stalked off with his usual dignity — in his hand holding the balance of power in the shape of a broken cane.
Cartoon of a free-lunch scene with Emperor Norton and the dogs Bummer and Lazarus, February 1863. By Edward Jump (1832–1883). Collection of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. Source: Berkeley Library Digital Collections
Later in his Introduction, Barker reinforces the point, writing that the story of Bummer and Lazarus “deserves telling on its own without any help from the Emperor.”
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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE columnist Herb Caen died in 1997. Sometime in the preceding 13-year period following the publication of Malcolm Barker’s book in 1984, Caen sprinkled his fairy dust on the book, giving it an apparently unqualified endorsement.
But, for some four decades in the mid 20th century, Caen was among those who quietly but persistently gave oxygen to the urban myth that Emperor Norton owned Bummer and Lazarus.
1948
It had started by the time of Caen’s first book, The San Francisco Book, published in 1948. In a chapter on San Francisco characters, Caen writes that the Emperor “was accompanied everywhere by two dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, who became as widely known as he.”
Excerpt from Herb Caen’s The San Francisco Book (Houghton Mifflin, 1948), p. 98. Collection of the Boston Public Library. Source: Internet Archive
1950
Two years later, in October 1950, Caen once again had San Francisco characters on his mind when he wrote in the San Francisco Examiner about “the fella who knew Emperor Norton so well that he was bitten regularly by Bummer and Lazarus — and still has the scars to prove it.”
“La Traviata,” item from Herb Caen column, San Francisco Examiner, 31 October 1950, p. 21. Source: Newspapers.com
1953
In his 1953 book Don’t Call It Frisco, Caen opens a chapter about two then-current San Francisco characters — Barney Ferguson and Chester (Tiny) “Birdwhistle” Armstrong — with a line about “Emperor Norton, the self-appointed overlord of everything, with his faithful dogs, Bummer and Lazarus.”
Excerpt from Herb Caen’s book Don’t Call It Frisco (Doubleday, 1953), p. 232. Source: Internet Archive
1964
A decade later, Herb Caen’s column of 26 April 1964 includes a mini-review of the then-new book The Forgotten Characters of San Francisco. The book is a collection of reprints — one of them, a limited-edition book by Anne Bancroft.
Of Bancroft’s contribution, Caen writes: “The second section, by Miss Bancroft (the granddaughter of the respected historian H.H. Bancroft)” — not really “respected” these days and probably not that respected by actual historians in 1964 — “is a reprint of a little book she wrote in 1939 about Bummer and Lazarus, Emperor Norton’s pet dogs.”
Herb Caen item, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 April 1964, p. 33. Source: Genealogy Bank
Caen has a bee in his bonnet about this book — and he continues to swipe at it in the column’s next item:
How does one go about making a book out of better-off-dead bits and pieces like this? I will let you in on a secret of the book-publishing trade — a device known as “bulking.” Once you know how to do this you, too, can bulk almost any kind of bunk into a book. Be the first kid on your block to bulk a book titled “I left My Liver in San Francisco. True Confessions of an Alcoholic.”
Bulking is accomplished by using very large type, surrounded by very wide margins, on very thick paper. This is not all to the bad, of course, since a lot of people are looking for something easy to read, and there’s nothing easier to read than big type surrounded by acres of white space. On the other hand, it’s nice if the type has something to tell us besides the ten-times-thrice-told tale of an old nut and his mutts.
In addition to putting an extra notch in the myth that Bummer and Lazarus were Emperor Norton’s dogs, Caen seems to reveal here a jaded view of the Emperor himself — possibly a subject for a later article.
1973
The 1974 Guinness Book of World Records announced that “the greatest dog funeral on record was for the mongrel dog belonging to the eccentric, King Norbert I of the United States.”
“Greatest Dog Funeral,” item in 1974 Guinness Book of World Records, p. 76. Source: Internet Archive
In a November 1973 item chastizing and correcting the Guinness editors, Caen writes that “Emperor Norton…had two famous mongrels, Bummer and Lazarus.”
Herb Caen item, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 1973, p. 33. Source: Genealogy Bank
Guinness “corrected” the item as follows for the 1975 edition and continued to run it this way through the 1985 edition of the book:
“Greatest Dog Funeral,” item in 1975 Guinness Book of World Records, p. 77. Source: Internet Archive
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IN REVIEWING Malcolm Barker’s book in November 1984, both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner highlighted Barker’s finding that Emperor Norton’s mastership of Bummer and Lazarus is a created fiction with no support in the documentary record of the 1860s.
An updated edition of the book published in 2001 featured, on the back cover, the following quote from Herb Caen: “A wonderful addition to the shelf of Sanfriscana!”
Back cover of 2001 edition of Malcolm Barker’s book, Bummer & Lazarus: San Francisco’s Famous Dogs. Source: Google Books
Caen died in 1997, so he would have been referring to the original 1984 edition of the book. Indeed, the earliest reference that I find to the quote — sans the exclamation point — is in some brief promotional info tucked into the back of a different book by Barker, published in 1996: More San Francisco Memoirs, 1852–1899.
Promotional information for original 1984 edition of Malcolm Barker’s book Bummer & Lazarus: San Francisco’s Famous Dogs on inside back page of Barker’s 1996 book More San Francisco Memoirs, 1852–1899. Source: Google Books
So, did Herb Caen revise his take on the Emperor Norton piece of the Bummer and Lazarus legend in light of Barker’s research?
1985
Here’s one answer…
In his column of 23 April 1985 — a little less than a year after the publication of Barker’s book — Caen references the volume, describing it as “the newish book about Emperor Norton’s dogs.”
Herb Caen item, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 April 1985, p. 19. Source: Genealogy Bank
Apparently, Herb Caen only skimmed Malcolm Barker’s introduction — not paying attention to the part about the Emperor.
For Caen, it seems, this is one old myth that never died — it just kept getting recycled in his columns.
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