Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/259

 Benjamin Harrison, the republican candidate, was elected. West on the death (16 Oct. 1888) of his elder brother Mortimer, first Baron Sackville, had succeeded to the title by special remainder a fortnight previous to his departure from the United States, and had inherited the historic property of Knole Park near Sevenoaks, where he passed the rest of his life. He retired from the diplomatic service on pension in April 1889, was made G.C.M.G. in September following, and lived at Knole till his death there on 3 Sept. 1908. There is at Knole an excellent portrait of him in pastel by Mr. Philip Laszlo.

Lord Sackville was not married. While an attaché at Stuttgart in 1852 he had formed an attachment for a Spanish lady, whom he met during a visit to Paris, and who subsequently left the stage to five with him, but with whom, as she was a strict catholic and already married to a husband who survived her, he was unable to contract any legal union. He had by 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 English society as his family. The two sons were established on an estate in Natal. The younger, Ernest Henri Jean Baptiste Sackville-West, claimed on his father's death 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 in February 1910. The title and entailed property consequently descended to Lord Sackville's nephew, Lionel Edward (eldest son of Lieutenant-colonel the Hon. William Edward Sackville-West), who had married Lord Sackville's eldest daughter.

 ST. HELIER,. [See (1843–1905), judge.]

ST. JOHN, SPENSER BUCKINGHAM (1825–1910), diplomatist and author, born in St. John's Wood, London, on 22 Dec. 1825, was third of the seven sons of James Augustus St. John [q. v.] by his wife Eliza Agar, daughter of George Agar Hansard of Bath. Percy Bolingbroke St. John [q. v.] and Bayle St. John [q. v.] were elder brothers, and Horace Stebbing Roscoe St. John [q. v.] and Vane Ireton St. John (see below) were younger brothers. After education in private schools, Spenser wrote ’innumerable articles' on Borneo, to which the adventures of Sir James Brooke [q. v.], rajah of Sarawak, were directing public attention, and he took up the study of the Malay language ( Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 129). He was introduced to Sir James Brooke on his visit to England in 1847, and he accompanied Brooke as private secretary next year, when Brooke became British commissioner and governor of Labuan. Lord Palmerston, an acquaintance of St. John's father, allowed him 'in a roundabout way 200l. a year' (ib. p. 130). Thenceforth St. John and Brooke were closely associated. St. John was with Brooke during his final operations in 1849 against Malay pirates, and he accompanied Brooke to Brunei, the Sulu archipelago, and to Siam in 1850. Although St. John deemed some of his chief's dealings with the natives high-handed and ill-advised, he in a letter to Gladstone defended Brooke against humanitarian attack in the House of Commons. While the official inquiry into Brooke's conduct, which the home government appointed, was in progress at Singapore, St. John acted temporarily as commissioner for Brooke (1851-5), and visited the north-western coast of Borneo and the north-eastern shore, ascending the principal rivers. Appointed in 1856 British consul-general at Brunei, St. John explored the country round the capital, and penetrated farther into the interior than any previous traveller. He published his full and accurate journals, supplemented by other visitors' testimonies, in two well-written and beautifully illustrated volumes entitled 'Life in the Forests of the Far East' (1862; 2nd enlarged edit. 1863).

In November 1859 St. John revisited England with Brooke, and after returning to Borneo became chargé d'affaires in Hayti in January 1863. He remained in the West Indies twelve years. During his residence in Hayti the republic was distracted by civil strife, and by a war with the neighbouring state of Santo Domingo, and St. John frequently took violent measures against native disturbers of the public peace. On 28 June 1871 he became chargé d'affaires in the Dominican republic, and he was promoted on 12 Dec. 1872 to the post of resident minister in Hayti. His leisure was devoted to a descriptive history of the country, which was finally published in 1884 as 'Hayti; 