Living in London, he saw people of all sorts, and the puritan sternness which lay at the root of his character was concealed by the cynical humour which gave zest to his conversation.
He had not forgotten his native county, and in 1863 he took a house at Salcombe on the southern coast of Devonshire.

Ringrone, which he rented from Lord Kingsale, is a beautiful spot, now a hotel, then remote from railways, and an ideal refuge for a student.

"We have a sea like the Mediterranean," he tells Skelton, "and estuaries beautiful as Loch Fyne, the green water washing our garden wall, and boats and mackerel." Froude worked there, however, besides yachting, fishing, and shooting.
In 1864, for instance, he "floundered all the summer among the extinct mine-shafts of Scotch politics--the most damnable set of pitfalls mortal man was ever set to blunder through in the dark." His study opened on the garden, from which the sea-view is one of the finest in England.

Froude loved Devonshire folk, and enjoyed talking to them in their own dialect, or smoking with them on the shore.

He was particularly fond of the indignant expostulation of a poor woman whose husband had been injured by his own chopper, and obliged in consequence to keep his bed.