Thank you, Gino, for taking time from your busy week to respond. I have long had a minor interest in both Adolph Heinrich Sutro and Joshua Abraham Norton and I am very happy to see that Norton is the subject of your new experimental opera.

Your additional points are fascinating and well taken; and I will only add that Norton’s idea of himself as an Emperor must surely derive, I imagine, from
Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria, in 1864, proclaiming himself Emperor of Mexico, during the Second Mexican Empire, with the backing of Emperor Napoleon III of France and a group of Mexican monarchists. That self-proclamation ended in Maximilian’s execution three years later, at the hands of the Mexican Republicans. (Darius Milhaud’s opera Maximilien was premiered at Paris’s Palais Garnier in 1932.)

Also, as you point out (although I remain uncertain of Cape Town’s synagogue predating that of S.F.), special attention must be paid to Norton’s African experiences. I can easily imagine Norton closely following the brutal progress of Leopold II of Belgium, who became Emperor in 1865 (similar in time to Maximilian declaring himself Emperor of Mexico during the turmoil of the U.S. Civil War) and solely “owned” the Congo for the remaining 15 years of Norton’s life (as well as an additional 29 years). I see that Leopold II thought of himself as an astute businessman and that he once spent a week in Seville studying Spanish records of their trade with their Latin American colonies. (Emperor Leopold II was the subject of one of William Kentridge’s recent projects at the SFMOMA.)

Please, Gino, let us know if your opera makes it to KQED’s “Spark” — or later tours! Thanks again.

More to your main comment: “I think that there was something other to Norton’s personality change than simply being Jewish, an immigrant to Gold Rush San Francisco, or having spent part of his early life in South Africa…”

I totally agree. I didn’t mean to insinuate that he changed simply because he was one of the first South African Jews to arrive in SF. I’m aware of the diversity of the population at that time. And certainly, losing a fortune was a major factor in how he behaved later in life, not to mention other undocumented forces in his life.

The point I was trying to make was that, culturally and politically, he came from a totally different world (e.g., from a family raised under a British monarchy that emigrated to SA) than what he found in SF. Because he was dissatisfied with what stood for a democratic political system in the city at the time, he decided to do something about it directly. (Sure, there were other people in SF at the time who came from countries under monarchies, but apparently few of them believed they had royal blood in their veins, as Norton is said to have believed.)

It’s clear that Norton felt the political and justice system at the time was ineffective. Much of what he witnessed was mob justice. For example, in his early years in SF, he was compelled to join a vigilante organization as a matter of survival. But he was deeply troubled by the pseudo-justice of such groups, and he ultimately distanced himself from them.

With these kinds of things in mind, it makes sense to me that he would decide one day to take matters into his own hands and declare himself Emperor, in order to abolish the corrupt organizations and to right the wrongs that he witnessed every day.

Additionally, William Drury notes in his biography of the Emperor that Joshua Norton was not an observant Jew when he arrived in SF. In fact, he says that Norton was ambivalent about religion until after he declared himself Emperor, at which time he made it point during his rein to visit all religious institutions equally, so as to not show any favor towards one over the other.

Nonetheless, I believe that, having been brought up in a religious household, he had a sense of morality that he ultimately wanted to establish in late 19th century San Francisco. Hence my comment.

Polly, I think that this sentence in your otherwise excellent piece is somewhat problematic. Numerous Jewish immigrants arrived in earlier to mid 19th century San Francisco from Europe, London (like Joshua Abraham Norton), New York City, New Orleans, and elsewhere – including Loeb Strauss, founder of Levi Strauss. I think that there was something other to Norton’s personality change than simply being Jewish, an immigrant to Gold Rush San Francisco, or having spent part of his early life in South Africa (although the last would be the greatest predictor, I imagine, of his subsequent personality change, along with his very substantial inheritance and later bankruptcy).

Norton came to S.F. in 1849 from London with a $40,000 inheritance. On December 31, 1849, the population of San Francisco was estimated at 100,000 including 35,000 people who came by sea, 42,000 who came overland, and 3,000 sailors who deserted ships.

Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco’s first synagogue – then comprised of 2,400 households –was formally established in 1850 (a dozen years before the first synagogue in South Africa, in Cape Town.)

See also:

http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist/chron1.html

(For example, on February 4, 1846, the ship “Brooklyn” left New York bound for San Francisco with members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints aboard. They had been instructed to “flee Babylon.” They departed for California the same day other Saints left Navoo, Illinois, following clashes with settlers over polygamy. The party from Navoo was to meet Sam Brannan’s group at Yerba Buena. …)