come complicated. She had entered into close relations with Edward Topham [q. v.], a captain in the guards, who was concerned in a daily newspaper called the ‘World,’ in the production of which she assisted. She had, moreover, backed bills for a considerable amount for her brother-in-law, the husband of a Miss Davies who appeared at the Haymarket on 28 July 1786 as Amelia in the ‘English Merchant.’ This last indiscretion involved her in endless trouble. More than once she was a prisoner in the Fleet and in other places of detention in England and Ireland. In the Fleet she met Joseph Sumbel, her second husband, who was confined there for contempt of court. Sumbel was a Moorish Jew, secretary to the ambassador from Morocco, and the wedding was performed in the Fleet. A year later he sought unsuccessfully to have the marriage annulled or dissolved, declaring that on account of informality she was not his wife. A man of morbid temperament, he seems to have been alternately making passionate love to her and disowning her or leaving her to starve. She meanwhile embraced his religion and took the name of Leah. She subsequently reverted to Christianity, and became either a Romanist or a Wesleyan. The three volumes of the rambling autobiography which she published are occupied principally with details of travels in search of her children, who refused to know her, or of friends. On one occasion she started from Portobello to walk to London, arriving in Newcastle (whence she took ship for London) in four and a half days—if true, a remarkable feat. Drunkenness seems to have supervened on madness, and such record as is preserved of her later years is equally sad and unedifying. She does not seem to have acted much later than 1790, though she gave her imitations at private houses, and attempted to give them publicly during Lent, but was prevented by the bishop of London. O'Keeffe speaks of her as dead in 1826.
She published in 1811 ‘Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sumbel, late Wells, of the Theatres Royal Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Haymarket, written by herself,’ one of the scarcest of theatrical works (London, 3 vols. 8vo; the British Museum Library has three copies). The remainder seems to have received a new title-page in 1828, when it appeared as ‘Anecdotes and Correspondence of Celebrated Actors and Actresses, including Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kemble, Mr. Colman, Mrs. Siddons, &c. Also an Account of the Awful Death of Lord Lyttelton.’
Mrs. Sumbel was a beautiful woman, a good actress in comedy and respectable in tragedy. Frederick Reynolds, who was intimate with her at Topham's seat, Cowslip Hall, speaks of her as the most beautiful actress on the stage, though not the best. Her portrait, in the character of Cowslip in the ‘Agreeable Surprise,’ was engraved by Downman (Bromley, p. 447). She was much praised in the press, and enjoyed during some years a large amount of popularity. Her salary at Covent Garden was at one period as much as ten pounds a week, but the chances of a brilliant career were neutralised by her irregularities. An attempt to pit her against Mrs. Siddons (of whom she was evidently jealous) was naturally doomed to failure.
A portrait of her by Dewilde, as Anne Lovely in ‘A Bold Stroke for a Wife,’ is in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club. An engraving by J. R. Smith from his own picture of her as Cowslip was published by Ackerman in 1802.
[Mrs. Sumbel's life is told very incoherently in her Memoirs. Other facts have been extracted from Genest's Account of the English Stage; Boaden's Life of J. P. Kemble; O'Keeffe's Recollections; Life and Times of Frederick Reynolds; Hazlewood's Secret History of the Green Room; Gilliland's Dramatic Mirror; Thespian Dictionary; Young's Memoirs of Mrs. Crouch.]
WELLS, ROBERT (d. 1557), dean of Ely. [See Steward.]
WELLS, SAMUEL (d. 1678), nonconformist divine, son of William Wells of Oxford, was born in the parish of St. Peter, Oxford, on 18 Aug. 1614. He matriculated from Magdalen Hall on 11 May 1632, and graduated B.A. from New College on 27 June 1633, and M.A. from Magdalen Hall on 3 May 1636 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714). After keeping a school at Wandsworth, Wells was ordained on 28 Dec. 1638, and soon after became assistant to Dr. Temple at Battersea. When the war broke out he went in 1644 as chaplain to Colonel Essex, leaving his wife and family settled in Fetter Lane, London. He was placed in the sequestered rectory of Remenham, Berkshire, in 1646 or 1647, by the Westminster assembly. Here he had a good income and little to do, there being but about twenty families in the parish. He therefore gladly accepted a call to Banbury, where a wider field awaited him, albeit a much poorer living. He was inducted into it on 13 Sept. 1648, as the parish register shows, by order of the House of Lords (Lords' Journals, x. 501).
