The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra(15)

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.

38

693GG_TXT.indd 38

29/10/2013 16:17

LA PETITE DUCHESSE

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 the roadside in the rain. And 39

693GG_TXT.indd 39

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

there on the doorstep was Grandmama waiting to greet them, surrounded by many of her extended family.

Everyone at Balmoral was charmed by the chubby and happy

ten-month-old Olga, including her admiring great-grandmother.

‘The baby is magnificent’, she told her eldest daughter Vicky in Berlin; all in all she was ‘a lovely, lively grandchild’.62 ‘Oh, you never saw such a darling as she is,’ wrote the queen’s lady-in-waiting Lady Lytton, ‘a very broad face, very fat, in a lovely high Sir Joshua baby bonnet – but with bright intelligent eyes, a wee mouth and so happy – contented the whole day.’ Lady Lytton thought Olga ‘quite an old person already – bursting with life and happiness and a perfect knowledge how to behave’.63 The British press remarked on Alexandra’s ‘pride and joy at having a little daughter to bring with her’ as being ‘almost pathetic to witness’.64 ‘The tiny Grand Duchess takes very kindly to her new surroundings,’ reported the Yorkshire Herald, ‘and it is said that the moment she saw her great-grandmother she delighted that august lady by adopting her as her first and most willing slave.’65 Queen Victoria was so smitten that she even went to see Olga taking her bath, as did other members of the royal household, all of whom admired a happy and informal Russian empress enjoying the pleasure of her child – so totally in contrast to her normal stiff and haughty manner.

Nicholas meanwhile was having rather a miserable time of it, suffering from neuralgia and a swollen face – caused by the decayed stump of a tooth (he was fearful of the dentist). He complained during the visit that he saw even less of Alix than at home, because his uncle Bertie insisted on dragging him out grouse-shooting and deer-stalking all day in the cold, wind and rain. ‘I am totally exhausted from clambering up hills and standing for ages . . . inside mounds of earth’, he wrote in his diary.66