ABSTRACT
When the famine of 1829 had passed and another winter had come and gone, Elizabeth Napier found herself in failing health. She was now well into her sixties. In the spring of 1830 she had a health crisis and Napier took her back to England, leaving the children behind. The couple travelled by way of Corfu, setting sail from there on 20 May. 1 It is best for the moment to let Napier himself tell the next part of the story. At the outset of the eighty-page chapter on his departure with which he closed the anti-Adam book, he recalls that on Corfu he
received the most marked kindness from Sir Frederick Adam; he received my sick wife on the beach, lodged us in the palace, and gave us a passage on board a public vessel. . . . [H]e accompanied us on board, and his last words to me, were (I believe I quote his exact words, certainly I quote their meaning): – ‘Well Napier, good bye. Stay in England as long as Mrs. Napier’s health requires it, but remember, that the longer you stay away, the worse for us here.’ How could I imagine, that this man was, at the moment, trying to prevent my return, and that his apparent kindness arose from his desire to get rid of me? I had not been long in England, when I heard that he had already begun to overturn my plans at Cephalonia, plans sanctioned by himself; and I saw, with regret, that he was the dupe, and (by his situation) the powerful agent, of a faction, to calumniate an absent man. 2
