Read "His most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII" by Marie Belloc Lowndes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
_The author is indebted to an authority on sport for kindly revising this chapter._
An account of the King as a sportsman begins, appropriately enough, with the sport of kings, though this is by no means the only pastime with which His Majesty has identified himself. Still, at any rate during his later years as Prince of Wales, he was chiefly associated in the public mind with racing, and his colours -- purple, gold band, scarlet sleeves, and black velvet cap with gold fringe -- were familiar at all the principal meetings. After his accession His Majesty leased his horses to the Duke of Devonshire for the season of 1901, but it was understood that, following the example of several of his predecessors, the King intended to resume his active connection with the Turf later on. Although His Majesty has been a member of the Jockey Club for over thirty years, his personal interest in racing is a matter of later growth, for it was not till July 1877 that Queen Alexandra honoured Newmarket with her presence to see her husband's colours carried for the first time. On that occasion the King had no luck, his horse Alep, a pure-bred Arab, which started favourite, being beaten by Lord Strathnairn's Arab Avowal by twenty or thirty lengths. Five years later the King won the Household Brigade Cup at Sandown with Fairplay.