Emperor of the Air: Norton I

"At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States,
I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the past
nine years and ten months of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself
Emperor of these United States . . ."
-- Emperor Norton I, first imperial proclamation, Sept. 17, 1859

He was Mark Twain's neighbor and Leland Stanford's enemy. He was broken by
William Tecumseh Sherman and defended by Ben Cartwright. He was the sole
legitimate Emperor of the United States of America for 21 years. He took the throne
on the heels of an assassination and was buried with full Masonic honors. He was
Norton I, nee Joshua Abraham Norton, and if the foregoing hasn't tipped you off yet,
he makes great game material -- both as a figure of mystery and evocation, and as
an example of the kinds of threads that spiral out from any life lived on the edges of
High Weirdness. Weaving those threads into a cloth of fools' gold, or into new
clothes for the Emperor -- that's what I'll do here, and one hopes you'll do in your
game.

"Norton has shed no blood, robbed no one, and despoiled no country, which is
more than can be said for most fellows in the king line."
-- apocryphal verdict at Norton's sanity hearing

As perhaps befits an Emperor who reigned only, or at least primarily, in his own
world, the best resources available are on the Web; the essay "The Madness of
Emperor Norton" by Joel GAzis-SAx makes an excellent starting point. If one's
instincts turn printward, the diamond in the rough is William Drury's Norton I. Sorting
those stories, the following figure emerges. Joshua Norton, possibly of Jewish
extraction, was born in Deptford (where Marlowe was stabbed in 1593) on
Valentine's Day, 1819. His parents emigrated to South Africa in 1821, and after
working as a ship's chandler, Norton took ship for Rio and thence to San Francisco
in the Gold Rush of 1849. In San Francisco, Norton prospered, buying five plots of
land (two wharves and a chunk of the future Barbary Coast) and brokering
transactions of all kinds out of a beached ship-turned-warehouse, the Genesee. By
1854, Norton was worth $250,000 -- a considerable fortune. But he lost it all in a
failed investment in rice futures -- his ship came in, but it came in after three other
ships had all dumped their cargoes of Peruvian rice, wiping out Norton's investment.
Lawsuits and other stock shenanigans (and a brutal foreclosure on his mortgaged
property by prominent San Francisco banker and future General William Tecumseh
Sherman) left Norton bankrupt by August 1857. Norton couldn't recover, and in
September of 1859, the city feverish after the assassination of Senator David
Broderick by the lawyer David Terry, he realized that he could repair his fortunes and
those of the city by a sudden, dramatic act. He proclaimed himself Emperor.
San Franciscans somehow took to their new monarch, egged on by the antics of the
many competing local papers. The papers printed Norton's proclamations
(dissolving Congress, firing Lincoln, calling upon the North and South to sign a
truce, proclaiming religious unity, etc.) and when they ran short, made up their own
Nortoniana to fill space and score political points. (Norton's famous proclamation
ordering the construction of a suspension bridge from San Francisco to Oakland is
probably such a forgery, assuming that word means something in this context.)
Norton was able to make a tenuous living exchanging American coins for his own
printed "imperial currency" in many denominations -- the burgeoning tourist trade
and many San Francisco bars and restaurants accepted Norton's notes freely. Mark
Twain, who lived near Norton, used the kindly Emperor as great copy and as a
pointed contrast to railroad robber baron Leland Stanford. (Twain eventually based
the character of the King in Huckleberry Finn on Norton.) Norton acted, at all times,
with dignity befitting the Emperor of America -- for him it was no joke but the
overriding condition of his life; possibly it was the only thing that made his near-
total poverty tolerable. He continued to ride around the city on his bicycle, wearing a
sword and a special Imperial uniform given him by the Presidio army base, attending
public functions until he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on January 8, 1880 at 8:15
a.m. His funeral, at the Masonic Cemetery, was the largest the city had ever seen,
attended by 10,000 people.

"I could argue all day about the significance of facing east in religious rituals, but a
clean table is a clean table."
-- attributed to Emperor Norton I

So what does Norton signify; what does he illuminate? In a game of mystical

symbolism, the existence of a mad Emperor should send up signal flares --
madmen traditionally serve as conduits for the divine; in Islamic countries the mad
are "touched by Allah," while the insane become shamans in some tribes.
Astrologically, the signs are murky; strange objects crossed the sun at Norton's birth
in 1819 and his ascension in 1859 (the latter was identified as the planet Vulcan by
Leverrier). The United States, of course, is a Cancer (born July 4) and hence
governed by water; Norton (the king from over the sea) was a watery Aquarius (as
was Lincoln, who became ruler of America shortly after Norton did). The Emperor in
the Tarot looks to East and West -- Norton traded in China and came from Africa,
settling in the crossroads city of San Francisco. His symbol, the Eagle, is the symbol
of Norton's two kingdoms, the U.S. and Mexico. The Emperor represents the
wounded Fisher King (Tennyson published The Holy Grail the year Norton ascended
to the throne); Norton's "unhealing wound" is his insanity. The Emperor is Osiris,
dead and resurrected; Norton proclaimed his rule at the funeral of an assassination
victim (a sacred sacrifice?) and died the year that another Mason, James Garfield,
became President -- before being assassinated himself in July 1881.
Kabbalistically, "Norton" adds to 1099 -- the year that Godfrey of Boullion made
himself King of Jerusalem only to die, like Garfield, in July of the next year. Norton I
= "Norton" + 1 = 1100; or "jackal," recalling Anubis, the dog-headed Egyptian god
of death. Norton had two dogs, Bummer -- and Lazarus.

" 'You all were so embarrassed by that, I bet,' said Salvoy, grinning. 'Your exalted
king, probably babbling nonsense and dressed like a bum, right? Or naked, looking
like a crazy man. Brought down in the world, and how. Dizz-gusting! And you
sensible folks probably just ran away from him. Think how pleased he must have
been with his friends.' "
-- Tim Powers, Earthquake Weather
More specifically, Norton's era was a powerful attractor of American kings. Andrew
Carnegie was the Steel King, Henry Frick the King of Coke, and Oliver Winchester
became the Rifle King after buying the Volcanic Rifle Company in 1857 -- two years
before Norton became Emperor. Winchester (whose middle name, of course, was
"Fisher") even died in 1880, the same year as Norton. San Francisco itself had at
least two potential monarchs besides Norton; the mad aconite-liniment salesman
known as the King of Pain and the phrenologist William Coombs alias George
Washington II. The King of Pain committed suicide after losing his prized coach-
and-four gambling; Coombs claimed to be Washington's reincarnation and rightful
king of America, but was forced to leave San Francisco after Norton published a
proclamation declaring Coombs insane. Finally, no mention of Norton's royal rivals
can go by without noting that Norton died exactly 55 years to the day before Elvis
Presley -- America's new Undying King -- was born.

"Perhaps occasionally the soul of Emperor Norton descends once more into the
world to momentarily inhabit the body of an otherwise undistinguished infidel. One
day I was sitting in a hamburger stand in rundown Midtown Atlanta. A burned-out
speed freak at a nearby table looked at me with a pleasant smile and said, 'I'm King
of the Universe. I don't know what I'm doing in a place like this.' "
-- Principia Discordia

So what, then, is the Real Truth behind the life and reign of His Imperial Majesty
Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico? Elusive; and thus
we bisociate among our old favorites the INWO groups, offering nine Nortons -- a
royal assortment to tempt any gaming palate.

The Bavarian Illuminati: Norton was what he claimed to be -- the Bourbon heir
smuggled to South Africa and placed into power by the Masons of Occident Lodge
No. 22. He pulled the strings of invisible power in the Golden Gateway to the
Pacific.

Discordians: For Eris so loved the United States, or at least California, that she gave
her only begotten son to be its Emperor.

The UFOs: Norton ordered his subjects to support the inventor Frederick Marriott --
in his construction of a revolutionary airship. A mysterious airship appeared over
Galisteo Junction, New Mexico the year Norton died -- and over his capital of San
Francisco in 1896.

Adepts of Hermes: Norton's reign, lasting 21 years, is exactly three times the
traditional seven-year reign ascribed to the King of the Witches by Margaret Murray
and her ilk. Norton, the former trader in crops such as rice and tobacco, served as
the Horned God of America (or at least for California) while Mammy Pleasant, the
voodoo mistress of San Francisco, served as Dark Queen, his rival and coregent.

Shangri-La: Norton used his royal powers for peace, calming anti-Chinese rioters
and working to improve conditions for all. The true triads saw the Emperor among
them.

Gnomes of Zurich: Norton created his own banknotes, his own currency, in a city
home to golden hills and the U.S. Mint -- an act of supreme plutomantic power that
the Gnomes had to respect. They rested easier when he was dead.

Bermuda Triangle: He ordered the building of a sacred bridge and died at the
crossroads of California and Dupont, under a clock. He was buried with his fellow
Masons on the Founding Day of the Order of the Golden Fleece. They moved his
body on June 30, 1934 to a California town where the dead outnumber the living.

The Network: San Francisco's mad and secret king (who invented "a new kind of
railroad switch," the plans for which were "lost" in the Fire of 1906) and computers?
No connection. Unless you remember the origins of hacking in the MIT Tech Model
Railroad Club, and don't believe that "Norton Utilities" is a coincidence.

Servants of Cthulhu: Norton bravely threw himself into insanity, proclaiming himself
Emperor to block the path to power for a different King -- the King in Yellow, who
brings depression and madness to all those he encounters. Say, Clark Ashton Smith
spent some time in San Francisco, didn't he?

Past Columns

Article publication date: January 29, 1999

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