Madam, – Queen Victoria on her visit to Dublin in 1900 attended Sunday morning service in St Patrick’s cathedral, as was the custom of the reigning monarchs. On that Sunday the boy soloist was one Alfred Birch. The queen was so impressed by his singing that she arranged for Alfred, accompanied by the cathedral organist Dr Marchant, to come and sing at the Vice-Regal Lodge where she was about to entertain VIPs to lunch. Alfred sang from Handel’s Messiah “I know that my Redeemer liveth” and as an encore Mendelssohn’s “O for the wings of a dove”.
In thanking Alfred, the queen said that Mendelssohn loved Scotland and the Highlands, that she had entertained him in Balmoral Castle, and that he had played some of his compositions on the piano there. The queen then presented Alfred with a set of silver cuff-links with the royal monogram Victoria Regina. Alfred made a career in the British army, retired as a major with an OBE, and returned to live in Dublin where he resumed his connection with St Patrick’s as a member of the past choristers. He told me the story and gave me the cuff-links for safe keeping in the cathedral. – Yours, etc,