died, he traveled to Chicago and snagged a job at the Chicago Herald by writing about a carriage horse that wore asummer hat with holes cut from the brim for its ears. He earned a reputation as reporter with an eye for sentimental human-interest stories, and he was surely the only reporter in Chicago translating the poems of Sappho while waiting around the old Des Plaines police station for a murder that he could bang into a story. He published a volume of his own poetry, climbed higher at the Herald, a Democratic newspaper, and wrote editorials praising Grover Cleveland. The president was pleased and surprised Horton with an offer of a Foreign Service job—a plum position in Berlin. Horton asked instead for a posting that was open in Athens. The president gave it to him.
In 1893, Horton had traveled to Athens with his second wife, whom he had married in Chicago. He served there happily, feasting on its sights, collecting stories, and enjoying the parade of characters—archaeologists, artists, and politicians from throughout the world, including the Greek royal family. He befriended Stephen Crane, “a slender earnest young man who was drinking himself to death.” Then, in 1898, the newly elected McKinley administration, exercising its own patronage rights, recalled him and sent a hard-money Republican in his place. Horton returned to Chicago and wrote even more seriously. He published two best-selling novels with Greek settings and moved among a group of rising literary stars of the Midwest. His friends included Edgar Lee Masters and Theodore Dreiser. Walt Whitman praised his poetry, and William Dean Howells his prose. He seemed to have a brilliant literary career ahead, but in 1903, his second wife left him for a wealthy Chicago businessman, and he sank into a paralyzing depression. An anonymous letter from a jealous lover had disclosed the affair to Horton. Unable to concentrate or write, Horton resigned his newspaper job, traveled aimlessly around the country with his young daughter, Dorothy, and her nurse, and eventually ended up in the small upstate New York town where he had grown up. In today’s language, he was most likely clinically depressed.
He was rescued by an assassination. In September 1906, an anarchist shot President McKinley, and he died eight days later. Horton’s friends lobbied the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, to return Horton to the consulship in Athens. Roosevelt was willing to help a promisingAmerican writer. Horton reluctantly sent Dorothy to her mother in Chicago, and he returned to Athens, exploring again his beloved ancient ruins, reciting Attic verse, and handling his old consular duties with pleasure.
Horton had liked the irreverence of Chicago newsrooms, and he had a Chicago journalist’s instinct for the common man, but he also was a romantic. Walking through Chicago’s Greektown, Horton had enjoyed the greetings of Greek American lunch-counter cooks who called him, “ Kyrie Georgios, ” “Mr. George.” He responded to their peasant vernacular in ancient Greek, the language of Pericles, which only further endeared him to them as an eccentric. Horton loved Greece, the idea of it as well as the reality of it. He was a sentimentalist, and he wore his sentiment proudly. It was a characteristic that would hurt him with the diplomatic professionals in the State Department, where a cool indifference to the inhabitants of foreign countries was held in high regard. As events would demonstrate, Horton was anything but detached.
In 1910, the State Department posted him to Salonika. The next twelve years of his career would give him an education in religious conflict and ethnic cleansing.
He had arrived in Salonika, then still an Ottoman city, at a time of political tumult in the Ottoman Empire. Two years earlier, a group of young Ottoman army officers, embittered by the empire’s decline and its territorial losses, had forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to reinstate Turkey’s
In 1893, Horton had traveled to Athens with his second wife, whom he had married in Chicago. He served there happily, feasting on its sights, collecting stories, and enjoying the parade of characters—archaeologists, artists, and politicians from throughout the world, including the Greek royal family. He befriended Stephen Crane, “a slender earnest young man who was drinking himself to death.” Then, in 1898, the newly elected McKinley administration, exercising its own patronage rights, recalled him and sent a hard-money Republican in his place. Horton returned to Chicago and wrote even more seriously. He published two best-selling novels with Greek settings and moved among a group of rising literary stars of the Midwest. His friends included Edgar Lee Masters and Theodore Dreiser. Walt Whitman praised his poetry, and William Dean Howells his prose. He seemed to have a brilliant literary career ahead, but in 1903, his second wife left him for a wealthy Chicago businessman, and he sank into a paralyzing depression. An anonymous letter from a jealous lover had disclosed the affair to Horton. Unable to concentrate or write, Horton resigned his newspaper job, traveled aimlessly around the country with his young daughter, Dorothy, and her nurse, and eventually ended up in the small upstate New York town where he had grown up. In today’s language, he was most likely clinically depressed.
He was rescued by an assassination. In September 1906, an anarchist shot President McKinley, and he died eight days later. Horton’s friends lobbied the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, to return Horton to the consulship in Athens. Roosevelt was willing to help a promisingAmerican writer. Horton reluctantly sent Dorothy to her mother in Chicago, and he returned to Athens, exploring again his beloved ancient ruins, reciting Attic verse, and handling his old consular duties with pleasure.
Horton had liked the irreverence of Chicago newsrooms, and he had a Chicago journalist’s instinct for the common man, but he also was a romantic. Walking through Chicago’s Greektown, Horton had enjoyed the greetings of Greek American lunch-counter cooks who called him, “ Kyrie Georgios, ” “Mr. George.” He responded to their peasant vernacular in ancient Greek, the language of Pericles, which only further endeared him to them as an eccentric. Horton loved Greece, the idea of it as well as the reality of it. He was a sentimentalist, and he wore his sentiment proudly. It was a characteristic that would hurt him with the diplomatic professionals in the State Department, where a cool indifference to the inhabitants of foreign countries was held in high regard. As events would demonstrate, Horton was anything but detached.
In 1910, the State Department posted him to Salonika. The next twelve years of his career would give him an education in religious conflict and ethnic cleansing.
He had arrived in Salonika, then still an Ottoman city, at a time of political tumult in the Ottoman Empire. Two years earlier, a group of young Ottoman army officers, embittered by the empire’s decline and its territorial losses, had forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to reinstate Turkey’s
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