Page:King Edward VII. as a sportsman by Watson, Alfred Edward Thomas.djvu/259

 Balmoral. His devotion to duty, and the fact that he was a man of many interests, made it impossible for him to spend a longer time on his Highland estates. But the days that were passed there provided a full measure of sport. With forty thousand acres of deer forest and one of the finest grouse moors in Scotland, to say nothing of more than a dozen miles of salmon fishing, there were not many off-days during the King's stay in the Highlands. The forest and the moor claimed all his attention; the river, except as 'a thing of beauty,' had no charm for him, for King Edward was not a fisherman. Neither by temperament nor by circumstance was he predisposed to the angler's art. The strenuous life that he was compelled to lead in the exercise of his high calling, the days mapped out hour by hour with ceremony and routine, the weighty significance of his every public action, the vast responsibility that rested upon him—all these things must have made the hours of relaxation very precious; and, whilst he delighted in being alone or in the company of one or two friends, he might well have been impatient of a sport that demands so much from its devotees, and gives them so little in tangible form in return.

That King Edward, in his hours of ease, desired above all else to escape from the 'fierce light which beats upon a throne,' is proved by his own words and actions. 'I am happiest when … I can, like plain Mr. Jones, go to a race-meeting without it being chronicled in the papers next day that His Highness the Prince of Wales has taken to gambling very seriously, and yesterday lost more money than ever