Emperor Norton Does Art Criticism With a Borrowed Jackknife — And the Crowd Loves It

December 28, 2023 / John Lumea

By 1861 — and for the 18-plus-year remainder of his reign — Emperor Norton was a favorite and enduring subject for San Francisco cartoonists and theater troupes, who found that local audiences enjoyed the good-natured lampooning of their Emperor.

The Emperor himself was less amused — and, there are a couple of oft-cited examples of the Emperor’s expressing his royal displeasure over how he was portrayed in these contexts.

Recently, we uncovered an “episode of displeasure” that is even better documented than the familiar examples.

The occasion was the mounting of an advertisement using Emperor Norton’s image on a construction fence at Montgomery and California Streets. The Emperor borrowed a jackknife; cut out the image of himself; and sliced the image to shreds.

The crowd, as they say, “went wild.”

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, cartoon, comic, caricature, photograph, theater, depiction, portrayal, Safe Deposit Building, Montgomery Street, California Street, advertisement, ad, George Frederick Keller, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Jump, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Reese, 1861, 1863, 1869, 1873, 1874, 1875

The Genesis of the Second "Joshua Norton & Co." of San Francisco

November 16, 2023 / John Lumea

Conventional wisdom holds that, when Joshua Norton arrived in San Francisco, he immediately found a business partner and established Joshua Norton & Co. — and that this firm operated continuously until the legal and financial fallout from Joshua’s prolonged rice contract dispute left him deserted and on his own.

But, a close reading of the newspaper record indicates that, during his first 3½ years in San Francisco, Joshua Norton alternated between periods of working with a partner (“& Co.”) and working as a sole proprietor — and that there were three distinct business partnerships that operated under the name “Joshua Norton & Co.”

The primary 20th-century biographers of Emperor Norton identify Joshua’s first business partner as Peter Robertson. But, our recent discovery of details that apparently were missed by these authors suggests that Joshua and Peter did not meet until nearly a year into Joshua’s San Francisco sojourn — and that they met at a time when the “original” Joshua Norton & Co. already had disappeared from view and Joshua was once again working solo.

The circumstantial evidence points to Peter Robertson as the partner in the second Joshua Norton & Co — not the first.

Read on for the full story.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Joshua Norton & Co., Peter Robertson, 242 Montgomery Street, Cross Hobson & Co., Sansome Street, Jackson Street, Pacific Street, William Sim, partner, partnership, newspaper, directory, advertisement, ad, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1939, 1986

The Mixed Economy of the Eureka Lodgings Building of Commercial Street

October 28, 2022 / John Lumea

When one reads that Emperor Norton lived in "the Eureka Lodgings" at "624 Commercial Street," it's tempting to imagine that the Eureka was in a building with one address and one use — and that the Eureka was it.

In fact: There were two buildings on the Eureka site between c.1850 and Emperor Norton's death in 1880, with the Eureka building arriving in 1857. Both buildings had three addresses and a variety of business tenants — with the second of the two buildings hosting the Eureka and two previous hotel/lodging establishments that each occupied only a portion of the top two floors.

At various times during the 1860s ― including while the Emperor was living here between 1864/65 and 1880 — the second building was home to some of the best-known and -respected businesses in early San Francisco history.

Both of the buildings on the Eureka site were located between Montgomery and Kearny Streets, with frontages on both Commercial and Clay Streets.

What follows is, we believe, the first published attempt to establish a "tenant timeline" of the Commercial Street frontages of these buildings between c.1850 and 1880.

Read on for some fascinating history — and some terrific advertisements!

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Commercial Street, Montgomery Street, Kearny Street, Eureka Lodgings, Arcade, Arcade Saloon, Hotel Richelieu, Benton House, Aaron Babcock, David Hutchinson, John Cabaniss, A.C. Gamble, Pierre Trapet, Felix Hanlon, Meussdorffer, hatter, Lawrence & Houseworth, John W. Cherry, Contra Costa Laundry, Kohler Chase & Co., directories, advertising, advertisement, Daily Alta California, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Daily Herald, 154 Commercial, 156 Commercial, 158 Commercial, 624 Commercial, 626 Commercial, 628 Commercial, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1864, 1865, 635 Commercial, 637 Commercial, 175 Clay, 177 Clay, 637 Clay

“A New State of Things?” A Pre-Imperial Proclamation from Joshua Norton in July 1859

March 08, 2022 / John Lumea

On 5 July 1859, Joshua Norton took out a paid ad in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. The ad was a brief “Manifesto” addressed to the “Citizens of the Union.” It outlined in the broadest terms the national crisis as he saw it and suggested the imperative for action to address this crisis at the most basic level.

This was a little more than two months before Joshua issued his Proclamation — published in the same paper — declaring himself Emperor of the United States on 17 September 1859.

Together with what we already knew — that Joshua Norton continued to run business ads for nearly a year after his insolvency of August 1856; that the San Francisco directories of 1858 and possibly 1859 included listings for him...

The Manifesto is one of three additional pieces of evidence that Joshua Norton remained on the scene — and in San Francisco — in the period between his insolvency and his installation as Emperor.

One of these three traces is an historical “rescue” — reported by Allen Stanley Lane in his 1939 biography of Emperor Norton but apparently forgotten and possibly never documented before now.

The other two — including the Manifesto — are, we believe, discovered, documented and published here for the first time.

This new information should put to rest the conventional wisdom that Joshua Norton "disappeared" for X number of years only to "reemerge" fully transformed on a beatific day in September 1859.

No, there was a process and a path from fall to rise — from Point A to B.

These are three more of that path's public signposts.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / manifesto, advertisement, ad, candidate, candidacy, Congress, independent, tax collector, Democratic Party, jury, juror, I. Ferris Waldron, Wells Fargo, directory, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 1855, 1857, 1858, 1859

The Mid-Century Advertising Origins of an Emperor Norton Illustration That Still Is Finding New Life After 50 Years

September 07, 2021 / John Lumea

There’s a familiar and popular illustration of Emperor Norton that most Nortonians know because it appeared on a Discordian flyer created by Greg Hill a.k.a. Malaclypse the Younger.

Hill wasn’t just any Discordian. He was one of the two co-founders of Discordianism, the mystical “anti-religion” that reveres Emperor Norton as a saint. It is Hill qua Malaclypse who is credited with the oft-quoted aphorism: “Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Hermann Hesse. Hardly anybody understands Einstein. And nobody understands Emperor Norton."

But, it wasn’t Hill who drew the Emp that is featured on his flyer. He cribbed the illustration from one of the most influential corporate advertising firms in the United States. The illustration was work the firm had just done for an Old West banking client that has been a household name for generations.

The ad firm already had a connection of sorts to the Emperor. Soon — 50 years ago this past July — the firm would create what now is regarded as one of the most legendary ads in the history of the discipline.

The obscure origins of the firm’s portrait of the Emperor have remained hidden for decades.

Read on to see what’s under the rock. It’s a fascinating story.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Greg Hill, Malaclypse the Younger, Discordianism, flyer, McCann Erickson, Death Valley Days, Wells Fargo, advertising, advertisement, newspaper, Mark Twain, Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Black Bart, Terrance Ryan, Lil Tuffy, 1956, 1970, 2020

The Emperor Norton Trust

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Emperor Norton Does Art Criticism With a Borrowed Jackknife — And the Crowd Loves It

The Genesis of the Second "Joshua Norton & Co." of San Francisco

The Mixed Economy of the Eureka Lodgings Building of Commercial Street

“A New State of Things?” A Pre-Imperial Proclamation from Joshua Norton in July 1859

The Mid-Century Advertising Origins of an Emperor Norton Illustration That Still Is Finding New Life After 50 Years