Sometimes a low cost miniature portrait can be just as interesting to research as a more valuable one. In this instance bringing faces to historical events which might otherwise never have come to attention. This miniature cost £55 including shipping and is inscribed on the reverse "Copied by Hon'ble Mrs Mortimer Sackville West from drawing by E Smith" and then "Viscount Cantilupe 1848"The title, sometimes spelled Cantelupe, is nearly 1000 years old. According to M. Rouault (the author of the Life of Sir Thomas de Cantelon), the first of this family who came to England was William de Cantelou, at the time of the Conquest: and he likewise mentions a Seigneur de Cantelou among those who went with Robert Courtheuse to the crusade of 1096. The fief of Chanteloup, forfeited by William de Cantilupe under Philip Augustus, passed to a French branch that held it till towards the end of the thirteenth century, when their heiress conveyed it to Fulk Paisnel. The William de Cantilupe from whom the English house derives was of great account in the reign of King John. "He was steward of the household, and one of the chief counsellors, who in the fourteenth year of that unquiet reign, when the King his master was excommunicated by the Pope, adhered faithfully to him."
This Viscount Cantilupe was the eldest brother of Mortimer Sackville West who married Elizabeth Faber in 1873. Thus it can be deduced the miniature was painted by Elizabeth after 1873 from a portrait of her late brother-in-law drawn in 1848. In 1848 there is recorded only one miniature painter active with the initial E Smith. That was Edwin Dalton Smith (1800->1866) who lived in London and was noted for painting miniatures on ivory, as well as portraits and flowers in watercolour. Thus it seems likely his 1866 death precluded asking him for painting a miniature in 1873.
George John Frederick West, Viscount Cantelupe (26 April 1814 – 25 June 1850), was a British politician. Styled Viscount Cantelupe from birth, he was the eldest son of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr, by Lady Elizabeth Sackville, daughter of John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset. He was the elder brother of Major-General Charles Sackville-West, 6th Earl De La Warr, Mortimer Sackville-West, 1st Baron Sackville, Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville and Elizabeth Russell, Duchess of Bedford. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford.[1] Lord Cantelupe served in the Grenadier Guards, reaching the rank of lieutenant.[1] In 1837 he was returned to Parliament for Helston, a seat he held until 1840,[1][2] and then represented Lewes until 1841.[1][3] He died unmarried in June 1850, aged 36, predeceasing his father. His younger brother Charles eventually succeeded in the earldom. His death was reported as;
A young man who promised to be an ornament to the Peerage has been cut off—Viscount Cantilupe, the eldest son and heir of the Earl and Countess De la Warr. He was attacked by rheumatic fever after at- tending Ascot races and died almost suddenly, when the disease at last involved the brain. Viscount Cantilupe was Member for llelstone from 1837 to 1840; represented Lewes in 1841; and was once a Conservative candidate for Sussex. Refined, accomplished, and benevolent, his loss will cause deep grief to a large circle of Mende.
Elizabeth's husband, Mortimer Sackville-West, 1st Baron Sackville (22 September 1820 – 1 October 1888), was a British peer and court official. Sackville-West was fourth son of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr, and Elizabeth Sackville, 1st Baroness Buckhurst, younger daughter and co-heir of John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset. On the death of his kinsman Charles Sackville-Germain, 5th Duke of Dorset, in 1843, the dukedom and its subsidiary titles became extinct. Large parts of the Sackville estates passed to the West family through Elizabeth. The Sackville-Wests inherited parts of the estates by arrangement, notably the estate of Knole Park in Kent. During his career Sackville-West held several high appointments within the Royal household. In 1876 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Sackville, of Knole in the County of Kent. The peerage was created with special remainder, failing heirs male of his body, to his younger brothers Lionel and William Edward. He died in 1888, aged 68, and was succeeded by his younger brother Lionel.
In turn, Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville GCMG (19 July 1827 – 3 September 1908), was a British diplomat. Lionel Sackville-West was Minister Plenipotentiary to Argentina from 1872 to 1878 and Ambassador to Spain from 1878 to 1881. The latter year he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, a post he held until 1888. His retirement was due to his writing of the Murchison letter. The Murchison letter was a political scandal during the United States presidential election of 1888 when Sir Lionel Sackville-West was entrapped by a political operative posing as a British expatriate. Murchison letter and Dirty Campaign Trick: The Phony Charles Murchison Letter ... which was described as - "The filthiest dirty campaign trick ever pulled because it literally destroyed a presidency." That sitting president was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat who had risked the support of big business by backing a lower tariff and earned a reputation for doing what he thought was right despite the political consequences. Challenging Cleveland was Republican Benjamin Harrison, grandson of ninth president William Henry Harrison. (The situation in 1888 sounds very little different to current US political wars!!)
In 1888 Lionel also succeeded his elder brother Mortimer in the barony of Sackville. Lionel had several children by a Spanish dancer, Josefa de la Oliva (née Durán y Ortega, known as Pepita). Soon after his death one of these, calling himself Ernest Henri Jean Baptiste Sackville-West, claimed to be a lawful son and his father's heir. He asserted that between 1863 and 1867 Sackville-West had married his mother. The case came before the English courts of law in 1909–1910, and it was decided that the children of this union were all illegitimate, as Pepita's husband, Jean Antonio Gabriel de Oliva, was alive during the whole period of his wife's connection with Sackville-West. Lord Sackville died in September 1908, aged 81, and was succeeded by his nephew, Lionel, who married Lord Sackville's daughter Victoria. They were the parents of the author Vita Sackville-West, here seen at Ascot in 1912. Vita Sackville-West
Elizabeth Faber herself was born in Yorkshire in 1840, daughter of Charles Wilson Faber and Mary Beckett Denison. Charles Wilson Faber, (1813-1878) was an inventor and industrialist, including the manufacture of elastic webbing, well-known cellular india-rubber mats, and the application of the same substance to the coating of metals. But several of his inventions were more pretentious : he contrived a new sheathing ships, he had an idea that construction of large rafts, worked by steam power, would be advantageous for marine purposes, he wished to revolutionize railway construction by substituting sledge motion for the rolling wheels and axles; and he had an ingenious plan for laying down a tunnel across the Straits of Dover. Elizabeth's elder brother, Edmund Beckett Faber (1847-1920), was ennobled as 1st and last Baron Faber. He died on 17 September 1920 at age 73, when the title lapsed. Her younger brother George Denison Faber, was ennobled as 1st and last Baron Wittenham was born on 14 December 1851. He married Hilda Georgiana Graham, daughter of Sir Frederick Ulric Graham, 3rd Bt. and Lady Jane Hermione St. Maur Seymour, on 7 October 1895 and died on 1 February 1931 at age 79, again without issue. It also appears a third brother Walter Vavasour Faber, a brewer, also died unmarried. Thus Elizabeth, nor three of her brothers, despite joining the aristocracy, endowed their father and mother with any grandchildren.
Yet another brother was brewer, John David Beverley Faber, known in association with Strong's as David Faber. See The History of Strong's of Romsey In 1886, the small Horsefair Brewery in Romsey was acquired by David Faber, to whom it was clear that technical developments and changing circumstances would make success for a small business ever more difficult. Population was, at that time growing rapidly, and industry developing throughout the country. The time for expansion was opportune, and in the same year that he acquired the Horsefair Brewery, David Faber bought out two of his Romsey competitors, George's Brewery in Bell Street, and Cressey's Brewery in the Hundred. David Faber was born in 1854 and came of a distinguished family, so that to his innate ability were added valuable family connections which must have assisted him greatly in the early development of his Company. Two of his brothers, Walter Vavasour Faber (1857-1928) sometime M.P. for Andover, and Charles Louis Faber (1862-1897) were for a time associated with him in the acquisition and running of different breweries, whilst two other brothers, Edmund Beckett Faber (1847-1920) afterwards Lord Faber of Butterwick, and George Denison Faber (1851-1931) afterwards Lord Wittenham, were partners in the banking company of Beckett and Company of Leeds. Another distinguished member of the Faber family, Sir Geoffrey Faber, founder and Chairman of the well known publishing company, and a Fellow of All Souls, a distant cousin of David Faber, was for a short time a Director of Strong's. Because of the zeal and business acumen of David Faber the small Horsefair Brewery in Romsey grew into a large company of high repute, whose trade covered much of the South of England. 1474
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