12 8. I. MAB. 25, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
253
Jury ' was produced at the Royalty Theatre.
But the actual beginning of the Sullivan
comic operas was in 1877, when D'Oyly Carte
commissioned Gilbert and Sullivan to furnish
him with another opera, and ' The Sorcerer '
was produced at the Opera Comique. After
a run of six months it made way for ' H.M.S.
Pinafore/ May 25, 1878. TOM JONES.
The late Mr. Davenport Adams's useful ' Dictionary of the Drama,' of which vol. i. (A G) only has been published (1904), gives, s.v. * Gilbert,' 1878 as the date of ' H.M.S. Pinafore.* This agrees with my own recollection. I think 1873 is too early.
As for tennis, the ' Oxford Dictionary,' s.v. ' Lawn Tennis, 1 gives a quotation from The Army and Navy Gazette of 1874 (vol. xv. p. 154), which fixes the date of the game :
" A new game has just been patented by Major
Wingfield ' Lawn-Tennis ' for that is the
name. . . .is a clever adaptation of Tennis to the exigencies of an ordinary lawn."
G. L. APPERSON.
All the authorities on operas and dic- tionaries of biography give the first produc- tion of * H.M.S. Pinafore, or the Lass that loved a Sailor,' as May, 1878, but the dates vary. I think we may, however, take The Times as correct, May 25, 1878, the piece being played at the Opera Comique. It was originally called 'The Mantelpiece,' and readers may remember the lines from ' Bab Ballads ' :
. . . .the worthy Captain Reece, Commanding of the Mantelpiece.
ARCHIBALD SPARKE.
- H.M.S. Pinafore, or the Lass that loved
a Sailor,' was produced at the Opera Comique Theatre by R. D'Oyly Carte, May 25, 1878, and ran for seven hundred nights.
Lawn tennis made its appearance in 1874. The first lawn tennis championship meeting was held at Wimbledon in 1877, and the first inter-university contest in that game took place at Prince's in 1881. G. F. R. B.
Lawn tennis was invented by my friend the late Col. Walter Wingfield of the Royal Body Guard, and succeeded "Badminton" in about 1873. HAROLD MALET, Col.
' H.M.S. Pinafore * was first performed on May 25, 1878, and ran for seven hundred nights. It seems unlikely that there could have been a previous play with the same title, but is it certain that the date of the letter is correct ? If not clearly written, a mistake might easily be made between 1873 and 1878.
Lawn tennis was first introduced in 1874-
It was then played on a court shaped like an.
hourglass, wide at each end and narrow in.
the middle, with some other variations from
its present style. The shape of the court
was altered, and it took its present form
about 1877. H. J. B. CLEMENTS.
Killadoon, Celbridge.
[MB. A. R. BAYLEY, MRS. E. E. COPE, MR. WM. DOUGLAS, MR. N. W. HILL, and ST. SWITHIN also thanked for replies.]
M. BELMAYNE, THE FRENCH SCHOOL- MASTER (12 S. i. 29). The recorded facts- about John Belmain have been brought together by Prof. Foster Watson in ' Re- ligious Refugees and English Education/ reprinted from the Proceedings of the- Huguenot Society of London, 1911, pp. 8, 9.. Belmain taught French to Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. In 1546 he was granted an annuity of 40 marks during his life. He was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Edward VI., and a Free Denizen in 1551. In 1550 he obtained a lease for twenty-one years of the parsonages of Minehead and Cotcombe, co. Somerset, and in 1552 a lease of the Manor of Winchfield, Hampshire. Prof. Watson's references include Archceologia,. vol. xii., mentioned by G. F. R. B. ; J. G. Nichols's account of Edward VI. (presumably in his Roxburghe Club ' Literary Remains of Edward VI.'); Strype's 'Life of Cheke ' ;, and Stevenson's Preface to the ' Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, 1558-9,' p. xxv.. EDWARD BENSLY.
CLERKS IN HOLY ORDERS AS COMBATANTS (11 S. xii. 10, 56, 73, 87, 110, 130, 148, 168,. 184, 228, 284, 368 : 12 S. i. 77). It may interest readers of * N. & Q.' to know that the Rev. Arthur Buckminster Fuller, a graduate of Harvard and a chaplain of a Massachusetts Regiment, after the Union forces had been driven back in their first attempt to storm the heights of Fredericks- burg, in 1862, seized a gun and joined his regiment in the next charge upon the heights; held by the Confederates, and was speedily killed. CHARLES E. STRATTON.
70 State Street, Boston.
DAVID MARTIN, PAINTER, 1737-98 (12S.i 166). Information with regard to portraits-- by Martin of the family of Keir, or of the Braces of Kinloch, may be obtained from the- catalogues of the Society of Artists, of which he was a member, and of which during the years 1773 to 1775 he acted in the capacity of treasurer. E. E. BARKER.
The John Rylands Library, Manchester.
