Contributors to Humanities Journals in France and England Took Note of Emperor Norton in 1937
Were European Intellectuals of the Early 20th Century Seduced By the Tall Tales Out of California?
BEFORE THERE WERE moderated online message boards and discussion groups, there were print journals like Notes and Queries.
Established in 1849 and originally published in London, Notes and Queries now is published by Oxford University Press, in Oxford — and is in its 177th year.
Although the journal has evolved, the basic concept is the same as it was in the beginning: separate sections of brief but erudite “Notes” and “Queries” — with similarly brief and erudite “Replies” for each — in an ongoing, issue-to-issue dialogue.
Originally subtitled "A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.," the journal long has carried the more general subtitle “For Readers and Writers, Collectors and Librarians.” The journal's focus is "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism."
Banner for Notes and Queries, V173 N8, 21 August 1937. Source: Internet Archive
A distinctive feature of Notes and Queries is anonymous contributors. Most contributors sign with their initials or with an alias.
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IN AUGUST 1937, the following Note appeared in Notes and Queries. It is signed “H.F.”
Note, “Emperor of the United States,” by “H.F.,” Notes and Queries, V173 N8, 21 August 1937, p. 133. Source: Internet Archive
For most of the life of this journal, the parameters of what might appear in the Notes section were broader than they are today. A Note could be a constructive statement of original scholarship. Or it could be a breezier news item — a summary of a story recently published elsewhere and “posted” in the spirit of an “alert” for the general education of the community of scholars and experts that constituted the journal’s readership.
The item above is in the latter category. Indeed, in the invocation of “a curious account…of a Joshua Abraham Norton,” the indefinite article “a” suggests that H.F. had been introduced to Emperor Norton via the recently published account they were flagging — and that this account probably defined the limits of H.F’s own “knowledge” about the Emperor.
The account that had caught H.F.’s attention had been published in a recent issue of L’Intermédiare des Chercheurs et Curieux.
Established in 1864 and published in Paris, this journal — whose full title and subtitle translates as The Intermediary of Researchers and the Curious: Literary, Historical, Scientific, and Artistic Questions and Answers, Discoveries, and Curiosities — was the French counterpart to Notes and Queries.
Banner of L’Intermédiare des Chercheurs et Curieux, vol. C, 30 June 1937.
Following is the item from July 1937 — contributed by Gabriel Liber.
The English translation is via ChatGPT — The Emperor Norton Trust’s first use of AI. By all means, if you are a native or veteran reader of French and can suggest improvements to the translation, let us know.
“Royautés de fantaisie,” L’Intermédiare des Chercheurs et Curieux, vol. C, 15–30 July 1937, cols. 601–602.
Fantasy monarchs (XCVII; XCVIII; XCIX; C, 85, 369, 409, 548). The Lorraine weekly L’Est Illustré of February 28, 1937 (p. 8) published an interesting article about Norton I, for whom the city council of San Francisco decided to build a statue.
Originally from England, Joshua Abraham Norton emigrated to San Francisco in 1849 and made a fortune. But after a fire destroyed his businesses, he lost everything. It was then that he declared himself Emperor of the United States — and even Protector of Mexico — and began covering the city walls with his grand-sounding proclamations.
What’s remarkable is that, throughout his life, the people of San Francisco treated him with genuine affection and respect. He was welcomed free of charge in the city’s best hotels, had a permanent seat at the city council, received a stipend of his own choosing, and wore an impressive uniform. Despite these eccentricities, he lived simply and modestly.
Once, when a ship’s captain refused to give him a free ticket, Norton I issued the following Edict, which he had posted throughout the city:
“We, Norton I, by the grace of God Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, decree and order that, as punishment for the refusal of the Navigation Company to grant Us free passage to Sacramento, its vessel Shubric shall remain under Our blockade until the said rebellious company submits to Our authority.”
The company quickly apologized.
Norton I’s last proclamation was dated December 31, 1879. His funeral was held that January and moved the entire city. All of San Francisco turned out to accompany him to the Masonic Cemetery, where a choir of two hundred children sang his favorite songs at his grave.
Perhaps, in the end, he was simply a brilliant dreamer — or an extraordinary hoaxer.
This item appears in volume “C” — 100 — columns 601 and 602 of L’Intermédiare.
The first thing to notice is the parenthetical following the title. The numerals appear to reference previous volumes of this journal — 97, 98, and 99 — as well as an earlier column number in volume 100. This, together with the title itself — “Fantasy monarchs” — suggest that this item could be part of occasional series on the general theme of self-declared royalty. [The visual documentation of L’Intermédiare presented here is not from a public archive and indeed is somewhat contraband. We are very lucky to have this much — getting more will be a much heavier lift.]
The item itself summarizes an even earlier article, published in the 28 February 1937 issue of L’Est Illustré (The Illustrated East). This was the Sunday magazine of a newspaper L’Est Republicain (The Republican East) based in the province of Lorraine, in the east of France.
As to the account itself…
Although the details are muddled — whether through careless transcription or bad translation — the Emperor did issue a Proclamation in February 1866 declaring a blockade on the Sacramento River:
Proclamation of Emperor Norton, Daily Alta California, 9 February 1866, p.1. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
Much of the rest of the account is fanciful: I find no record that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was contemplating any Emperor Norton statue in 1937. And — to borrow from the title of this item — the claims that the Emperor stayed in the city’s best hotels for free; had a seat on the Board of Supervisors; and dictated his own public salary are pure “fantasy.”
A choir of 200 children singing Emperor Norton’s favorite songs at his burial on 10 January 1880? That would have been lovely. But, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the next day that there were four children singing Christian hymns for the Jewish Emperor.
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IT WOULD BE fascinating to learn where the Lorraine writer of early 1937 got their “information.”
The two main secondary sources on Emperor Norton during this period — possibly difficult for a writer in France to come by — were Robert Ernest Cowan’s 1923 essay for the California Historical Society and Albert Dressler’s little book self-published in 1927.
Both Cowan and Dressler had a “sweet tooth” for a good Norton myth — but neither writer made the claims reported by the L’Intermédiare contributor of July 1937 and, apparently, written by the L’Est Illustré writer six months earlier.
Emperor Norton’s reburial at Woodlawn Memorial Park in 1934 was the occasion for many articles and items about the Emperor that were of varying and often-dubious historical quality.
Perhaps this was the “well” that the L’Est Illustré writer was drinking from?
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BACK to Notes and Queries…
In October 1937. M.H. Dodds — Madeleine Hope Dodds (1885–1972) — contributed the following Reply to H.F.’s item from August:
Reply, “Emperor of the United States,” by M.H. Dodds,” Notes and Queries, V173 N17, 23 October 1937, p. 304. Source: Internet Archive
Both the vibrant tone of Dodd’s reply — “This fantastic character….” — and the specificity of her response suggests that she knew exactly who Emperor Norton was.
Two things, though, are striking about all of these European commentaries from 1937:
1
The European interest in Emperor Norton in 1937 appears to have bubbled up more or less organically.
There was no obvious driver.
The Emperor’s 1934 reburial was nearly 3 years in the past.
And the publication of what would be the two most influential resources on the Emperor in some 15 years — Allen Stanley Lane’s biography Emperor Norton: The Mad Monarch of America and David Warren Ryder’s booklet of myths San Francisco’s Emperor Norton — still was a year-and-a-half away, in January 1939.
2
European intellectuals were surprisingly uncritical and credulous-seeming about the “facts” of the Emperor Norton story as presented to them.
Even in his parting shot of July 1937 — “Perhaps, in the end, he was simply a brilliant dreamer — or an extraordinary hoaxer” — Gabriel Liber is venturing a take on undocumented claims that he makes no effort to question — much less, to validate.
This suspension of disbelief is exactly what the California folklorist “intellectuals” of the 1920s and ‘30s — writers like Robert Ernest Cowan, Albert Dressler, David Warren Ryder, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Allen Stanley Lane — relied upon to create the anti-historical Norton Myth.
But, in creating the Norton Myth, these California writers were, in a very real sense, creating the myth of California itself. Seen through this lens, one can squint and see their effort as having a kind of internal logic.
One would have expected Europeans — much further afield from the Norton story (with the possible exception of Norton’s having been born in England) — to be more circumspect.
Were the French and English scholars of 1937 participating in the project of creating Emperor Norton — including by presenting fantastical stories as fact?
Or, rather, were they “playing it straight” by simply reporting out these claims and allowing the absurdity of the claims to speak for itself?
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