{"id":7088,"date":"2022-01-22T20:15:20","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T04:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=7088"},"modified":"2022-05-02T20:20:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T03:20:44","slug":"six-degrees-of-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2022\/01\/six-degrees-of-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"Six degrees of Wells"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s odd how even when one avoids H. G. Wells, it’s hard to get too far. Here’s an obscure connection, just for fun.<\/p>\n

I was listening to a half-hour BBC documentary program on the Hollywood Cricket Club<\/a>, mostly because it mentioned David Niven and Errol Flynn, but also because Jim Carter narrated. It had nothing at all to do with H.G. Wells. I have been taking a break, the pandemic having curtailed much of my research.<\/p>\n

Apparently the club was founded by Charles Aubrey Smith, and actor I’ve seen in many movies but whose name I didn’t know.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Look familiar? He was in such films as The Prisoner of Zenda<\/i>, The Four Feathers<\/i>, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/i>, and And Then There Were None<\/i>. Plus dozens more.<\/p>\n

Now take a look at him in 1895:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aha, a cricketer! And this was the year he started acting.<\/p>\n

So it turns out it’s less than six degrees of separation to Wells.<\/p>\n

He was a bowler for Sussex County between 1882 and 1892, 20 years after Joseph Wells (H.G.’s father) had done his double hat trick for Kent (4 wickets in 4 balls). It’s a small world, cricket — he would have know who Joseph Wells was.<\/p>\n

And according to Wikipedia, in 1920 Smith was in a British film called The Bump<\/em>. It was written by A. A. Milne. If you read this blog, you know that H.G. Wells was Milne’s teacher at Henley House School, which was run by A.A.’s father.<\/p>\n

So it could be serendipity. Or perhaps more things are connected to Wells than one would expect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s odd how even when one avoids H. G. Wells, it’s hard to get too far. Here’s an obscure connection, just for fun. I was listening to a half-hour BBC documentary program on the Hollywood Cricket Club, mostly because it mentioned David Niven and Errol Flynn, but also because Jim Carter narrated. It had nothing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[80,25,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-wells-project","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9102,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7088\/revisions\/9102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}