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To call Souter bookish would be like describing the Grand Canyon as a hole in the ground. In the ramshackle farmhouse nine miles outside Concord where he has lived since he was 11, groaning shelves of books on philosophy, history and the law have won the battle for space. Souter jokes that the room looks like "someone was moving a bookstore and stopped." Vacations are devoted to rereading as much of the work of a particular author as he can; he has plowed through Dickens, Proust, Shakespeare and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the legendary Supreme Court Justice. When he is not reading, Souter is hiking, often alone. He has climbed all the White Mountains 4,000 ft. or higher, and in one day hiked the 25-mile-long trail that crosses over the Presidential Range. His habits include attending services at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Hopkinton, where he prefers the 1928 prayer book to the 1970s modernized version. His close friend from Oxford, Dr. Melvin Levine, who now teaches pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School at Chapel Hill, says of Souter, "You really feel as if you are with one of our Founding Fathers."
Like other aspects of his life, the unmarried Souter's social activities resemble those of an 18th century gentleman, when an unmarried relative was often the backbone of the community, with the leisure to do what those with children did not have time for. Like Henry Higgins, Souter may be happiest spending "his evenings in the silence of his room; ((in)) an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb."
But Souter had barely left the podium in the press room of the White House before Republican Party officials were raising "the 50-year-old bachelor thing," which was widely interpreted as a way of introducing speculation that Souter is homosexual. In fact the question has been dealt with twice: once in 1978, when Souter was about to be appointed a superior court judge, and then again in 1983, before he was named a state supreme court justice by then Governor John Sununu. During law school, he went out with Ellanor Fink, a student at Wheaton College. After he became a superior court judge, he dated Anne Hagstrom, a lawyer in the attorney general's office. She said going out with Souter was like "knowing someone from another century." More recently, Souter has dated a woman who works at a Boston television station.
The more serious question about Souter's ascetic ways is whether a man who seems to prefer books to people can empathize with and understand the problems of ordinary people. Former state attorney general Steven Merrill says he once feared that Souter lacked "the social context" to serve as a judge, but that concern dissipated once Merrill got to know him. Former girlfriend Fink says, "Having never married, I know everyone is wondering does he have the empathy to understand women's issues. He's not all brain. He's a friendly, warm person and extremely considerate." His former colleague Rath says, "David is the kind of person who will visit a clerk who is in the hospital or attend the funeral of the mother of one of his employees." On Sundays, Souter wheels an aged churchgoer across the street to the general store to pick up her Sunday New York Times, and then goes off to visit his mother Helen, 82, who moved to a nearby retirement home 10 years ago.