George Horton to Walt Whitman, 5 August 1891

Correspondent:
George Horton (1859–1942) was a New York-born journalist, writer, and diplomat. He was the author of eight novels, including Like Another Helen (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1900) and Miss Schuyler's Alias (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1913). His poems were often published in newspapers, and many were collected in Sons of the Lowly and Other Poems (Chicago: F. J. Schulte, 1892), including "Walt Whitman" and "To Walt Whitman (On receiving his book)." Horton began writing for the Chicago Herald about 1890 and first served as U.S. Consul in Athens, Greece, from 1893 to 1898, before returning to his position at the Herald. He was then editor at the Chicago American Literary Supplement until 1903, when he returned to Greece for a second term as U.S. Consul and married Catherine Sakopoulos. His daughter was the poet Nancy Horton (1912–2016). Beginning in 1911, Horton served as Consul in Smyrna, where in 1922 he witnessed the Great Fire of Smyrna and the Greek Genocide, which he describes in his book, The Blight of Asia (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926). Horton visited Whitman at his Camden home in November 1890 and later declared "there should be no doubt that Walt Whitman is a poet. . . . There is much music in Whitman, and it is the music of nature itself" (The Inter Ocean [March 13, 1892], 17). Whitman, in turn, described Horton as having "a professional look—lawyer-like, physician, artist, something—though he is only a newspaper man, has no further pretensions that I know of" (Thursday, January 8, 1891). Later, Whitman told Horace Traubel that Horton "manifested his friendliness in many ways" during his 1890 visit (see Thursday, August 27, 1891, where this letter is reproduced in full). Horton is buried in Washington D.C.'s Oak Hill Cemetery and his papers are housed at Georgetown University, including his inscribed copy of Leaves of Grass from Whitman.