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The Sandman #31 – Three Septembers and a January
Dream accepts a challenge from his siblings and gives failed businessman Joshua Norton the dream of being the first Emperor of the United States of America.
Emperor Norton (Wikipedia)
The Emperor Norton Bridge Campaign
Emperor Norton’s Proclamations
Emperor Norton’s Notes (50 cent note included below)
Emperor Norton – Was there a burial eclipse? (within one day, at least)
Looking for our Fear of Falling episode? It’s bonus content available to everyone here on Patreon!
Emperor Norton Obituaries
From the New York Times: January 10, 1880 pg 5
DEATH OF AN ECCENTRIC CALIFORNIAN.
A dispatch from San Francisco says that Joshua A. Norton dropped dead at the corner of California and Dupont streets, in that city, Thursday night. Norton was an Englishman, well-educated, and presumably of respectable antecedents. Drifting to California in the early flush times, nobody knows when he gradually sunk into vagrancy and lunacy.
His dementia was of a mild and harmless type, his ruling idea being that he was Emperor of the world. Clad in semi-military toggery, much the worse for wear, and bedizened with tarnished gold lace, “Emperor Norton” was one of the noted characters of San Francisco. He subsisted wholly on the bounty of the prodigal citizens of the place, and levied tribute with the humility and pertinacity of a citizen-Emperor. Among the old Californians there were not a few who humored the old vagrant’s fancy, and gave him a quarter of a dollar when pressing needs compelled him to remind his subjects that “The Imperial Treasury was in pressing need of funds” as the old man usually put the case in some such manner as this.
In seasons of popular commotion, he was accustomed to fulminate proclamations, duly signed “Norton I” and good-natured newspapermen would print these for the sake of the joke. Strangers invariably encountered his strange figure, tall, portly, arrayed in striking garb, and usually crowned with a plumed chapeau, and they were not long ignorant of his history. For 25 or 30 years this eccentric man has wandered the streets of San Francisco given “a square meal” almost whenever he asked for it, endowed with a certain income from easy-going citizens and tolerated because he was a public character of whose antecedents almost nothing was known and whose harmless delusion it pleased the popular whim to tolerate and encourage.
From The San Francisco Chronicle Reader (1962), which reprints a selection of articles from the newspaper’s past:
The characters San Francisco has always loved best are those it invented. Once born of the popular imagination they were savored and exaggerated. In death they burrowed even deeper into the folklore of the city.
The prototype for all such San Francisco characters was Norton I, an eccentric who assumed the role of Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico and a number of lesser honors. He was accepted with great toleration.
Currently, impersonators of Emperor Norton still appear at civic functions. A downtown tavern employes its version of the Emperor as a greeter. And in recent years Norton’s grandiose proclamations have appeared in The Chronicle, heralding springtime with a hunt for treasure he has caused to be buried within his capital city.
In the case of Norton, San Francisco has kept its tongue in cheek for nearly a century. This report demonstrates some of the legend’s original flavor. the Headline stated simply:
Le Roi
Est Mort
January 11, 1880
Imperial Norton is dead and turned to clay.
His funeral took place yesterday afternoon from the undertaking establishment at No. 16 O’Farrell street. All the afternoon the remains lay in state in the rear room of the Morgue. Thousands flocked thither for a last look at the man whose peculiarities of mind, garb and person had rendered him familiar to all.
The man of imaginary majesty, Emperor of the United State
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Dream accepts a challenge from his siblings and gives failed businessman Joshua Norton the dream of being the first Emperor of the United States of America.
Emperor Norton (Wikipedia)
The Emperor Norton Bridge Campaign
Emperor Norton’s Proclamations
Emperor Norton’s Notes (50 cent note included below)
Emperor Norton – Was there a burial eclipse? (within one day, at least)
Looking for our Fear of Falling episode? It’s bonus content available to everyone here on Patreon!
Emperor Norton Obituaries
From the New York Times: January 10, 1880 pg 5
DEATH OF AN ECCENTRIC CALIFORNIAN.
A dispatch from San Francisco says that Joshua A. Norton dropped dead at the corner of California and Dupont streets, in that city, Thursday night. Norton was an Englishman, well-educated, and presumably of respectable antecedents. Drifting to California in the early flush times, nobody knows when he gradually sunk into vagrancy and lunacy.
His dementia was of a mild and harmless type, his ruling idea being that he was Emperor of the world. Clad in semi-military toggery, much the worse for wear, and bedizened with tarnished gold lace, “Emperor Norton” was one of the noted characters of San Francisco. He subsisted wholly on the bounty of the prodigal citizens of the place, and levied tribute with the humility and pertinacity of a citizen-Emperor. Among the old Californians there were not a few who humored the old vagrant’s fancy, and gave him a quarter of a dollar when pressing needs compelled him to remind his subjects that “The Imperial Treasury was in pressing need of funds” as the old man usually put the case in some such manner as this.
In seasons of popular commotion, he was accustomed to fulminate proclamations, duly signed “Norton I” and good-natured newspapermen would print these for the sake of the joke. Strangers invariably encountered his strange figure, tall, portly, arrayed in striking garb, and usually crowned with a plumed chapeau, and they were not long ignorant of his history. For 25 or 30 years this eccentric man has wandered the streets of San Francisco given “a square meal” almost whenever he asked for it, endowed with a certain income from easy-going citizens and tolerated because he was a public character of whose antecedents almost nothing was known and whose harmless delusion it pleased the popular whim to tolerate and encourage.
From The San Francisco Chronicle Reader (1962), which reprints a selection of articles from the newspaper’s past:
The characters San Francisco has always loved best are those it invented. Once born of the popular imagination they were savored and exaggerated. In death they burrowed even deeper into the folklore of the city.
The prototype for all such San Francisco characters was Norton I, an eccentric who assumed the role of Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico and a number of lesser honors. He was accepted with great toleration.
Currently, impersonators of Emperor Norton still appear at civic functions. A downtown tavern employes its version of the Emperor as a greeter. And in recent years Norton’s grandiose proclamations have appeared in The Chronicle, heralding springtime with a hunt for treasure he has caused to be buried within his capital city.
In the case of Norton, San Francisco has kept its tongue in cheek for nearly a century. This report demonstrates some of the legend’s original flavor. the Headline stated simply:
Le Roi
Est Mort
January 11, 1880
Imperial Norton is dead and turned to clay.
His funeral took place yesterday afternoon from the undertaking establishment at No. 16 O’Farrell street. All the afternoon the remains lay in state in the rear room of the Morgue. Thousands flocked thither for a last look at the man whose peculiarities of mind, garb and person had rendered him familiar to all.
The man of imaginary majesty, Emperor of the United State