James was an insatiable lover of landscape, and particularly of wide "views." His inclination was to "open" the view, to cut down obstructing trees, even at the expense of the foreground. In drives and walks about Chocorua he usually made for some high hill that commanded the Ossipee Valley or the peaks of the Sandwich Range and White Mountains. Most hills in the neighborhood were topped by granite ledges and deserted pastures, and each commanded a different prospect. So the expedition often took the form of a picnic on one of these ledges. Axes were taken along; permission was sometimes obtained to cut down any worthless tree that had sprung up to shut off the horizon.
Before the end of such an afternoon James was more than likely to have fallen in love with the spot and to be talking of buying it. Indeed he was forever playing with projects for buying this or that hill-top or high farm and establishing a new dwelling-place of some sort on it. He was usually restrained by the price or by remembering the housekeeping cares with which his wife was already over-burdened. But he actually did buy two—one near Chocorua and one on a shoulder of Mt. Hurricane in the Adirondacks; and about the Chocorua region there is hardly a high-perched pasture which he did not at some time nourish the hope of possessing.
Another consideration that usually deterred him from buying was the difficulty of combining hill-tops with brooks. He used often to bewail this dispensation of nature; for a vacation without a brook or a pond to bathe in was as unthinkable as a summer dwelling-place that did not command a splendid view was "inferior." The little house at Chocorua stood at no great elevation, but it was near the Lake, and the place boasted its own brook, with a little pool, overhung by trees, into which the cold water splashed noisily over a natural dam. Thither, rain or shine, James used to walk across the meadow for an early morning dip; and after a walk or a drive or a couple of hours of chopping, or a warm half-day with a book in the woods, he used to plunge into it again.
A few lines, through which breathes the happiest Chocorua mood, may be added here, although they were written during a later summer.
To Henry James.
CHOCORUA, July 10.
...I have been up here for ten days reveling in the deliciousness of the country, dressed in a single layer of flannel, shirt, breeches and long stockings, exercising my arms as well as my legs several hours a day, and already feeling that bodily and spiritual freshness that comes of health, and of which no other good on earth is worthy to unlatch the shoe....
The next letter also rejoices over Chocorua, although it turns first to academic amenities. The correspondent addressed, now Sir Charles Walston, and Henry Jackson, both of the English Cambridge, had sent James two cases of audit ale.
To Charles Waldstein.
CAMBRIDGE, July 20, 1887.