Page:King Edward VII. as a sportsman by Watson, Alfred Edward Thomas.djvu/43

 following winter Count Trautmansdorff was one of the guests at Sandringham during the best shooting week there, and also that not very long afterwards the Abbot of Tepl was invited to Windsor, and found himself being taken round the Castle and shown its treasures by the King himself

Again, the "sportsman" should be endowed with nerve, courage, and contempt of pain; and these really great qualities King Edward possessed to the full. Those who were with him when big-game shooting in India were sincerely and legitimately impressed by the coolness he displayed, when still a novice, at the sport which they had been pursuing for years; and as an instance of his contempt of pain, the writer well remembers an occasion on board the Britannia when the Prince of Wales, as he was then, was standing in his accustomed place on the companion ladder with his chin resting on the binocular glasses which he held in his hands. By some mishap, the slack of the mainsail was dropped on to his head with such force that the glasses were literally flattened out, and his chin and neck were badly cut. A weak man would have been knocked out by such a blow, but the Prince hardly winced, and only commented forcibly on the clumsiness of the performance.

Another pastime that the King greatly fostered and encouraged was the royal and ancient game of golf. Although he never took to it himself, he fully recognised its merits, and did so in the most practical way. Golf