Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Two Mabels


This sepia portrait was taken about 1905, with young Mabel McClure Fisher holding her first baby, Harriet. Mabel's striped silk scarf, knotted at the throat, would look absolutely up-to-date today, more than a century later.







Mabel Watson Payne is named after her great-great-grandmother, Mabel McClure Fisher. Today's foggy summer sunlight revealed a windowsill crowded with well-wishing flowers in the San Francisco hospital room where (along with her parents and other doting relatives) Mabel Watson Payne passed her third complete day of outerworld life – waking occasionally to nurse with energy and then drifting back into her dreamworld (where clouds of glory are trailing).