Historical Randomness: Emperor Norton I

It was 1880, and on a sad Saturday in January, 30,000 people lined the streets of San Francisco to pay their final respects to Joshua Norton, first (and last) Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. A two-mile cortege made its way to the Masonic Cemetery as residents from across the social spectrum honoured one of history’s great eccentrics.

Of course, the USA doesn’t do emperors – that’s pretty much its reason for existing in the first place. However, on September 17 1859 they got one. Joshua Norton returned to San Francisco after a self-imposed exile. He had been made bankrupt the previous year – famines in China had lead to a ban on rice exports, and while Norton had spotted a potential business opportunity, things went badly wrong, resulting in him being caught up in protracted litigation. It’s possible that the stress of this situation pushed him over the edge, because on his return he declared himself emperor, demanding that Congress be dissolved.

Now, obviously Congress didn’t dissolve, not even after the Norton called upon the army to disband the government by force. It didn’t matter. Emperor Norton soon established himself as a beloved part of San Francisco life (by the way, don’t call it Frisco, he didn’t it being called Frisco), regularly seen in full dress uniform inspecting street cars. Although penniless, the city’s best restaurants let him eat for free, putting up plaques informing customers that they worked by order of the Emperor. He got the best seats in the house at theatre productions. He issued decrees that the streets should be cleared up and that residents should sponsor the airship experiments of Frederick Marriott (the man who coined the term ‘aeroplane’ and who was responsible for the US’s first unmanned aircraft). He pre-empted the Bay Bridge (when they extended the bridge in 2004, there was an unsuccessful campaign to name it after Norton) and when one of the Emperor’s dogs died, Mark Twain wrote its epitaph.

Everyone knew Norton was crazy, of course, but that didn’t matter; when a policeman tried to have him committed it led to a public outcry (“Emperor Norton has killed nobody, robbed nobody and despoiled no country, which is more than can be said of some fellows of his line”) – from then on all the police officers in San Francisco saluted the Emperor when he passed.

The mid-1800s wasn’t necessarily a barrel of laughs if you were Chinese-American – the usual story of immigrants being sought after as cheap labour, but facing racial discrimination as a result is an old, old story. So it’s worth remembering that, when an anti-Chinese riot broke out in San Francisco, Emperor Norton got between the riotters and their targets and simply recited the Lord’s Prayer until the mob dispersed.

In 1880, on a cold and rainy night, Norton I collapsed in the street and died, the first and only Emperor of the United States. His story is obscure, but he’s still remembered if you know where to look; there’s just something inspirational about the whole thing. Just one example – Neil Gaiman wrote about him in the comic book story ‘Three Septembers and a January’ (in issue 31 of The Sandman), in which a character comments that Norton’s “madness keeps him sane.” Something about that feels true.

So at the start of the year, when we’re all thinking about our hopes and dreams for the next twelve months, raise a glass to Emperor Norton and consider how even the strangest dreams can end up somehow beautiful. And then go and think about doing something crazy.

Happy 4th of July

This isn’t going to be a Fourth of July post that uses the occasion to attack America. Truth is, I love America. Admittedly I’ve only been there three times, which is enough to decide I like the place but not to have developed any long standing issues with it, like not being able to find a public toilet or free healthcare. And I’m not sure that New York and San Francisco are representative of the country as a whole.

But wait – is anywhere representative of the whole of America? Hawaii and Alaska seem poles apart, as are Hollywood and small town Oklahoma. It always seems slightly strange to me that the country is so polarised between two political parties, as you’d think the sheer size and diversity of the place and its population would have lead to thousands of smaller parties all fighting for radically different constituencies.

From the outside, that could well be a strange sort of strength – a national unity of sorts. Sure, I’m pretty certain that the place is rent with divisions, but there still seems to be a unifying principle behind it all. Certainly American patriotism is worn on the sleeve more than it ever is in Britain, where it’s only really brought to mind by wars, football and annoying newspapers. Sometimes the way American national pride is expressed is flat out offensive (I’m from Britain, for goodness sake, we’re a democracy too and we don’t hate freedom!), but often it’s touching, even inspiring.

But then America is an easy place to be inspired by. If you’re from the US, take a moment to consider that many of you live amid a landscape that can only be described as epic. All those deserts and mountains and beaches and vast cornfields… It’s no wonder Hollywood took off, what with all those locations in which to film.

But most of those landscapes exist within the imagination. Texas belongs to John Wayne movies, California to the Beach Boys. Maine is Stephen King’s, the South is Harper Lee’s, and New Jersey is Springsteen’s. Music and movies have created an imaginative landscape that, to outsiders perhaps, is more America than America. It’s a landscape that’s big enough to hold a lot a narratives.

And not all of those narratives are fiction – the space race, for instance, and the Civil Rights campaign. Say what you want about American politicans – I do – but it’s hard not to have respect for the likes of Neil Armstrong and Martin Luther King, people whose stories contain both the good and the bad of America.

So on the Fourth of July, America gets to celebrate its independence, and thinks a lot about freedom (and, hopefully, the responsibilities of that freedom). And I hope it’s a good day; I’m happy to be British and wouldn’t trade the BBC or NHS for anything, but I’m glad America is around. Because I also wouldn’t want to live in a world without rock and roll and footprints on the moon.

Cnut the Great and North Carolina

King Cnut the Great: ruler of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England, despite his successes, his legacy (in the UK at least) was pretty much obscured by the Norman invasion of 1066 and the death of his son, King Harold. Nowadays he’s best known for his role in folklore.

The story goes that he put his throne on the beach and commanded the tide not to come in. Obviously he ended up getting his feet wet, and the tale gets interpreted in one of two ways – either the futility of arrogance or as a king going out of his way to show that you shouldn’t claim power that only belongs to God.

A thousand years later, North Carolina has proposed a law that would prevent the sea level from rising (or, at least, measuring it in an inconvenient way).

I can’t think why I’ve linked the two…

Dreams and Visions: In Memory of Martin Luther King

(This post was originally written for Martin Luther King Day 2012, but as today is the anniversary of his assassination I thought it was appropriate to give it a second airing.)

“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!”

 

Wrong era, wrong country. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is, like the moon landings, something I’ll only ever experience second-hand, with decades of context and scholarship and history and conspiracy theories ossifying around it. It’s an amazing speech even today, but to have stood before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, at the height of the Civil Rights campaign, and just a couple of months before the Kennedy Assassination, must have been electrifying, visionary, transformative, one of the most iconic moments in a decade that feels like a thousand iconic moments stitched together.

3,000 miles away from where I sit today, America will be celebrating Martin Luther King Day, but his legacy, especially in a time of protest is relevant worldwide. That legacy is huge, covering everything from taking a stance against injustice to the importance of non-violence, but there’s another aspect to all this that may not get as much airplay today, although it’s something that’s stuck with me.

King came to prominance through the African-American church, with its preaching drenched in lyricism and a rapturous musical tradition, and his great speeches, two of which are quoted at either end of this post, reflect a poetry that’s been filtered through psalm-writers and prophets. His civil rights work was inseparable from his faith, and that raised an idea, a concept, a belief to the level of a vision.

If we take Hollywood as an authority, then visions are about the future – someone goes into a weird trance, all rolled eyes and strange camera angles and psychedelic rock, before delivering some ominous message. Maybe a crow will be watching them at the time, but the whole thing will be about the future – this is how things are going to unfold, and something, be it supernatural or even divine, will not be diverted from its path.

Well, that’s Hollywood for you.

Another way of looking at it is precisely that – another way of looking at things. In the Biblical tradition, that’s being granted the opportunity to see things through the eyes of God, and so visions and prophecy were as much commentary on current events as they were about the future. “This is the world you think you see,” says this idea, “But this is what it should be.”

And so King was a visionary in this sense, standing in front of thousands of expectant listeners and painting a picture of renewed and restored world while speaking with a prophectic voice against the sins of the present. There’s a line from the Bible that reads, in the sonorous tones of the King James Version, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And that’s hard to deny, because without a dream of a better world, the possibility of change, a sense of hope, what is there? Sure, life can go on as it always has, but if it’s founded on a false premise then sooner or later it’s going to crumble. In King’s case that was a state taking Melting-Pot America and trying to segregate it along racial lines. Nowadays it’s encouraging people to get educated, get rich, get famous, then immediately throwing them on the scrapheap of income inequality.

A better world is possible. It just needs visionaries to see it, envision it, preach it. Sometimes it’s not enough to protest – sometimes it’s necessary to inspire at the same time. That job often falls to prophets, dreamers, people who may be flawed – and King had his flaws – but who can still check out the burning bush, who can hear a still small voice amid the chaos, who can push forward and climb to the mountaintop. And that will attract naysayers and cynics and killers, but it’ll also attract crowds and communities and movements. And then the world will change because the vision is too powerful, too compelling, too true to fall. And as King declared, on the day before he died in 1968:

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”

 

Happy Birthday Wyatt Earp

Yes, I know I haven’t posted here for over two weeks. I have no real excuse and I’m trying to get back on the horse.

Which, I guess, is a suitable metaphor for today’s post, because it’s the birthday of Wyatt Earp.

There are two reasons I’m mentioning this. The first is because Kurt Russell’s portrayal Earp in the movie Tombstone is epic and badass and gave rise to one of the greatest, most hardcore speeches in cinema. It’ll never happen, but I long for the day I’m manly enough to deliver a speech like that whilst wearing a handlebar moustache.

The other reason is more prosaic. See, there’s a theory that Earp, iconic keeper of the Wild West tradition, hero of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, iconic American, had roots not just in the plains and deserts of the United States, but in the Black Country. Yes, it’s possible that Wyatt Earp’s family spoke like me.

I first heard this theory at university, and it’s one of the few things that I can remember from that time at the drop of a stetson. Not because I was a stoned student, you understand, but because my memory isn’t great and I tend to memorise quirky stuff at the expense of things that may actually be useful. Where did Wyatt Earp’s ancestors come from? Walsall. Intricacies of the Highway Code? Err…

And so, in 2008, the great neice of Wyatt Earp passed away. It was a long time since the more famous branch of the Earp family had links to Walsall, but even so, it’s hard to ignore links like that. I love the idea that the Black Country, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution but relatively undersold ever since, has links to Wild West legends and characters that shot their way out of the history books and into legend. It gives me a sense of local pride, I guess. Even if the link is fairly tenuous, and I’m from Dudley rather than Walsall, it’s still kinda awesome…

 

(During the course of researching this post, I discovered another unexpected link between American culture and Walsall – John Byrne, comic book writer notable for significant work on Superman, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, was born in West Bromwich before moving to Canada. That was, needless to say, an unexpected bit of local trivia which I think someone at the local council should make more of…)