Free The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) by Helen Rappaport

small near her – she feels her leg a little
    from time to time & gets a headache off & on – but there is
    nothing left of the sad & drooping look she used to have.53
    As for baby Olga, Victoria thought her ‘magnificent & a bright
    intelligent little soul. She is especially fond of Orchie smiling broadly whenever she catches sight of her.’54 Although Orchie was still in
    evidence, in fading hopes of a role, a new English nurse was taken
    on temporarily while a replacement for Mrs Inman was sought.55
    Miss Coster was the sister of Grand Duchess Xenia’s nanny and
    arrived on 2 May. She had an extraordinarily long nose, and Nicholas
    didn’t much like the look of her.56 In any event nanny or no nanny,
    Alexandra was still doing things determinedly her own way, now
    insisting that baby Olga ‘has a salt bath every morning according
    to my wish, as I want her to be as strong as possible having to carry such a plump little body’.57 After the exertions of Moscow another
    important trip was approaching: a visit to Grandmama at Balmoral,
    where baby Olga could at last be formally inspected.
    *
    On the surface the visit to Scotland would be an entirely private
    family visit, * but the logistics were a security nightmare for the British police, totally inexperienced in dealing with high-risk Russian
    * Although Nicholas took advantage of the visit to hold several important private and wide-ranging conversations with the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury.
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    tsars legendary as the target of assassins. The Russian royals arrived just as hysterical stories appeared in the British press of a ‘dynamite conspiracy’ led by Irish-American activists working with Russian
    nihilists, to kill the queen and the tsar too.58 Thankfully the ‘plotters’ were arrested in Glasgow and Rotterdam prior to the visit, and
    press suggestions of an attack on the tsar were later proved erroneous, but the scare underlined fears for the safety of the imperial couple
    – two of the most closely guarded monarchs in the world. In the
    run-up to the visit, the queen’s private secretary Sir Arthur Bigge
    had consulted closely with Lieutenant-General Charles Fraser,
    superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, who submitted a special
    report outlining the provision of detectives in addition to Nicholas’s own three Okhrana men. Ten police constables were to be on patrol
    in and around Balmoral Castle throughout the visit; railway
    employees would patrol the entire route of the tsar’s train and all
    bridges and viaducts be supervised by local police. Assistant
    Commissioner Robert Anderson admitted to Bigge that he was glad
    that the tsar was ‘at Balmoral and not in London. I should be very
    anxious indeed if he were here .’59
    On 22 September (NS) Nicholas and Alexandra arrived at the
    port of Leith on their yacht the Shtandart in the midst of a chilly Scottish downpour. ‘The sight of the Imperial baby moved every
    female heart in the crowd, and there was an animated display of
    pocket handkerchiefs’, reported the Leeds Mercury .60 Bonfires burning from hill to hill greeted every stage of the journey by train from
    Leith to Ballater, where a guard of honour made up of Highland
    pipers and men of the Royal Scots Greys (of whom Nicholas had
    been made an honorary colonel on his marriage to Alexandra) met
    the couple. But the bunting decorating the station was sadly bedrag-
    gled by the heavy rain by the time they arrived. The rain, although
    ‘repellent’ as Nicholas recorded in his diary, did not, however,
    dampen the spirits of the crowds who gathered to watch the five
    carriages of the Russian entourage – one exclusively for the use of
    Grand Duchess Olga and her two attendants – pass by.61 As they
    approached Balmoral the bells of nearby Crathie Church rang out
    and bagpipes played, as a line of estate workers and kilted Highlanders stood holding burning torches along