. I
believe that when he sat in his motor-car, driving it, he was filled,
intoxicated, with the pride and splendour of life. He had power over
everybody and everything that lay in his track, except other motor-cars;
and he exulted in his knowledge that he could annihilate them and didn't.
He enjoyed (voluptuously) his own mercy that spared them. Through his
motor-car he attained such an extension of his personality that he became
intolerable to other people and unrecognizable to himself.

And yet I do not think that even at the height of his ecstasy he ever
really forgot that he was Tasker Jevons, the great novelist and
playwright, in his motor-car. When he drove you through Portsmouth or
Chichester, or even through little Midhurst, you felt that he thrilled
from head to foot with self-consciousness. He knew and had acute pleasure
in knowing that people noticed him as he went by; that the tradesmen
turned out of their shops to stare after him; and that everybody said,
"See that chap? That's Tasker Jevons. He always drives his own car."

He owned that he enjoyed it. I remember the first time we went down to
stay with them (it was in May of nineteen-fourteen), when he was driving
us through Midhurst from the station, how he said to us, "I'm glad I
thought of living in the country. It makes me feel celebrated."

We asked him if he hadn't ever felt it before; and he answered solemnly,
"Never for a minute. Never, I mean, like I do down here. In London, if
you do gather a crowd round you, you're swallowed up in it. Besides, you
can't always gather a crowd. D'you suppose, if I were to drive down
Piccadilly in this car--short of standing on my head--I could attract the
attention I've attracted to-day? You saw those fellows come out and look
at me? Well--they do that pretty nearly every time, Furnival.

"No. London's no good. Too many houses--too many people--too many
motor-cars. You can't stand out. What a man wants to set him off is
landscape, Furny, landscape. You should see me on the goose-green at
Amershott towards post-time."

Well, I did see him on the goose-green towards post-time, and I saw what
he meant. It was really as if I'd never seen him before properly.

Heavens, how he stood out! It was as if a stage had been cleared for him,
and for the figure he cut. He was quite right. You couldn't have done it
in Piccadilly, or even in the suburbs. And he wasn't in his motor-car,
mind you, then; he was simply strolling