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In 1873 he meditated building a house on the Kenmare River, but in the course of that summer he went to visit Sir John Strachey, who was then living at Anaverna House, at Ravensdale in County Louth. The Stracheys left it not long after, and we went there for the first time in 1875.
After his retirement his health fluctuated. He visited Froude at Salcombe in June, and was able to enjoy sailing. He afterwards went to Homburg, and in the autumn was able to walk as well as drive about Anaverna. The intellect was becoming eclipsed, and he was less and less able to leave his chair.
Lord Coleridge was his colleague, and Fitzjames enjoyed his society. He afterwards went to Anaverna, and, though unable to walk far, took much pleasure in long drives. Meanwhile it began to be noticed that his mind was less powerful than it had hitherto been. It was an effort to him to collect his thoughts and conduct a case clearly.
He was a member of the 'Cosmopolitan'; he belonged also to 'The Club' and to the 'Literary Society, and he heartily enjoyed meeting distinguished contemporaries. In 1874 he paid a visit to his friends the Stracheys, who had taken for the summer a house at Anaverna, near Ravensdale, Co. Louth, in Ireland. He liked it so much that he resolved to become their successor.
Many bright hopes were buried with him; but those who loved him best may find some solace in the thought that few men have been so surrounded by the affection of their fellows, or have had, in spite of the last sad troubles, so joyous or so blameless a life. James's college friends have put up a brass to his memory in King's College Chapel. His family erected a fountain near Anaverna.
Early in 1893 he became finally unable to walk up and down stairs, and in the summer it was decided not to go to Anaverna. He was moved to Red House Park, Ipswich, in May, where he remained to the end. It had the advantage of a pleasant garden, which he could enjoy during fine weather.
He took the house accordingly, and there spent his holidays in the summer of 1875 and the succeeding years so long as his strength lasted. Anaverna is a village about five miles of Dundalk, at the foot of a range of grassy hills rising to a height of some 1,700 feet, within a well-wooded country below.
The mere bulk of the literary work he did at Anaverna would make it a surprising product of fifteen long vacations, and there was not a page of it which had not involved an amount of arduous labour which most men would regard as the antithesis of holiday-making.
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