This photograph shows one of those highly geometric, yet almost chaotic with growth, gardens so popular in Victorian era New England. It also shows the home of Gardiner Greene Hubbard in Manchester, Massachusetts, the first president of the National Geographic Society, and financier and philanthropist. The photograph was taken by his daughter Mabel. Just why it is called the garden flag, when the flag appears to be on the other side of the house, I can’t fathom. In any case, the flag is at half-mast on the death of General / President Grant, so the image dates from July 1885.

The photographer was Mabel Gardiner Hubbard Bell, who lost her hearing when she was four or five years old, due to Scarlet Fever. To help her cope, she became a student of a teacher who specialized in helping deaf students, Alexander Graham Bell. When she was 19 they married. By the time she took this photograph in 1885 she and Alexander had two daughters aged 5 and 7, and had suffered the loss of two baby boys who died as infants, and she was just approaching her 28th birthday. Her husband’s eight year old Bell Telephone Company, was providing his telephone service to about 100,000 Americans.