Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville

Lionel Sackville Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville, GCMG (19 July 1827 – 3 September 1908) was a British peer and diplomat.

Born Hon. Lionel Sackville West (his father later added Sackville to the family name in 1843) at Bourn Hall, Cambridgeshire, he was the fifth son of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr and his wife, Elizabeth. Privately educated at home, Lionel served as assistant précis writer to the fourth George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen in 1845, when the latter was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and after further employment in the Foreign Office, was appointed attaché to the British legation at Lisbon in July 1847. He transferred to Naples in 1848, to Stuttgart in 1852, to Berlin in 1853, was promoted to secretary of legation at Turin in 1858, and transferred to Madrid in 1864. In November 1867, he became secretary of the embassy at Berlin, and in June 1868 was transferred to Paris in the same capacity with the titular rank of minister plenipotentiary. He served under Lord Lyons throughout the exciting incidents of the Franco-Prussian War, following him to Tours when the capital was invaded by the German forces, and returning with him to Paris on the conclusion of peace. He was left in charge of the British embassy during the first weeks of the commune, when the ambassador had accompanied the French ministry to Versailles. In September 1872, he was promoted to be British minister at Buenos Aires, but remained in charge of the embassy at Paris until 7 November and did not arrive at his new post until September 1873. In January 1878, he was transferred to Madrid, where he served for over three years, acting as the plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom and also of Denmark in the conference which was held in 1880 to define the rights of protection exercised by foreign legations and consulates in Morocco.

In June 1881, shortly after the assassination of President Garfield, West was appointed to succeed Sir Edward Thornton as British minister at Washington, and then entered upon the most eventful and, as it turned out, the final stage of his diplomatic career. The feeling in the United States towards the United Kingdom had improved since the settlement of outstanding questions provided for by the Treaty of Washington (1871), and the reception given to West was cordial. But he soon found that the influence in Congress and in the press of the Irish Fenian party formed a serious bar to the satisfactory settlement of important questions. The measures taken by the British government for the protection of life and property in Ireland after the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882, caused intense excitement among sympathizers with the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States. The publication in the American press of incitements to murder and violence, and the arrests in the United Kingdom of Irish-born naturalized citizens of the United States, on a suspicion of crime, involved West in disagreeable correspondence between the two governments, and when some of those who had taken part in the Phoenix Park murders were traced and convicted, there were veiled threats against the British minister's life at the time of their execution. A trip in the president's yacht was deemed a wise precaution.

The discussion of various questions connected with Canada, especially the seizure by United States cruisers of Canadian vessels engaged in the pelagic seal fishery, and the measures taken by the Canadian government to protect their fishing rights in territorial waters against incursions by United States fishermen, occupied much of West's attention in succeeding years. In June 1885 he was appointed a KCMG. In 1887, he was called upon to discuss in conference with the United States Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard, and the German minister, the questions which had arisen in regard to the status of the Samoan archipelago, but the negotiations did not result in an agreement, and the matter was left to be settled at Berlin in 1889. In October 1887, the British government decided to send out Joseph Chamberlain on a special mission for the purpose of negotiating jointly with West and Sir Charles Tupper (the Canadian High Commissioners to the United Kingdom) a treaty for the settlement of the questions connected with the fishery rights in the seas adjacent to British North America and Newfoundland. A treaty was concluded on 15 February 1888, but was not ratified by the United States Senate. It was however accompanied by a provisional arrangement for a "modus vivendi" under which United States fishing vessels were admitted for two years to fishing privileges in the waters of Canada and Newfoundland, on payment of a moderate licence fee; thus the risk of serious friction was for the time removed.

During the seven years of his residence at Washington, West, who was both genial and laconic, had enjoyed unqualified popularity, and had maintained excellent personal relations with the members of the United States government. Yet in the autumn of 1888, his mission was brought to an abrupt and unexpected close. In September of that year, six weeks before the presidential election, he received a letter from California purporting to be written by a British subject naturalised in the United States, expressing doubts whether the writer should vote for the re-election of President Cleveland on account of the hostile policy which the democratic president appeared to be bent on pursuing towards Canada, and asking for advice. West unguardedly answered that any political party which openly favoured the United Kingdom at that moment would lose in popularity, and that the Democratic Party in power were no doubt fully alive to that fact, but that he had no reason to doubt that President Cleveland, if re-elected, would maintain a spirit of conciliation. West was the victim of a political trick. The letter sent to him was an impostor, and on 22 October, his reply was published in the "New York Tribune", a Republican paper, for the purpose of discrediting the democratic president with the Irish party. For a foreign representative to advise a United States citizen on how to vote was obviously a technical breach of international conventions. West, probably ill-advisedly, gave interviews disclaiming the statements attributed to him in the newspapers, but the United States government held them, in the absence of a published repudiation, to justify the immediate delivery, to West, of his passports. His mission consequently terminated on 30 October 1888, Lord Salisbury's attempts to exonerate him proving unsuccessful. Benjamin Harrison, the Republican candidate, won the election. This unhappy episode ended West's diplomatic career. He formally retired on pension on 2 April 1889. He was promoted to a GCMG in September 1890.

West, on the death of his elder brother Mortimer Sackville-West, 1st Baron Sackville, in 1888, had succeeded to the title by a special remainder a fortnight before his departure from the United States, and had inherited the historic property of Knole Park, near Sevenoaks. He passed the rest of his life at Knole, and died there on 3 September 1908.

Lord Sackville was not married. While an attaché at Stuttgart in 1852, he had made a liaison with Victoria Josefa Durán y Ortega, known as "Pepita" (daughter of Pedro Durán, a barber in Malaga, and his wife, Catalina Ortega, a gypsy), whom he met during a visit to Paris; she subsequently left the stage to live with him, but, as she was a strict Roman Catholic and already married to Juan Antonio de la Oliva, who survived her, no divorce was possible. Sackville had with her two sons and three daughters. The daughters joined him at Washington, their mother having died some years previously, in 1871, and were received there and in British society as his family. The two sons were settled on an estate in Natal. The younger, Ernest Henri Jean Baptiste Sackville-West, claimed on his father's death, under the Legitimacy Declaration Act 1858, to be the legitimate heir to the peerage and estates, but his action, after long delays in collecting evidence on either side, was finally dismissed by the Probate Division of the High Court of Justice in February 1910. The title and entailed property consequently descended to Sackville's nephew, Lionel, who had married Sackville's eldest daughter, Josephine Victoria Josefa; Victoria "Vita" Sackville-West was their daughter.

References

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*DNB
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