 Wells became something of an international celebrity while Bishop of Spokane, being invited to two Lambeth Conferences in 1900 and 1910.While in England in 1900 he was seated next to Queen Victoria at a dinner, and amused her with stories of Ulysses S. Grant (under whom Wells had served during the American Civil War) and Abraham Lincoln, whom he had met on several occasions.The Queen, thinking that the "Washington" in which Wells served was the Nation's Capital, and that Wells was a kind of chaplain to the President, invited him to family supper, and was not pleased to learn that her guest was, in fact, a missionary bishop in the rural northwest.