Clock Tower Lucknow
Two carefully positioned stamps at the top, according to the then prevailing "language of stamps" would say "Write soon." This is what the message – using the numbers associated with postcard collector rings – suggests as well.
Moorli Dhur & Sons
Clock Tower Lucknow
Apparently the tallest clock tower in India, this 221-foot high structure was constructed in the 1880s.
Playing the Game in India
A humourous card from Moorli Dhur & Sons referring to gambling, a habit which many British soldiers in particular – at least from the postcard evidence – seem to have indulged in. The servant on the left is saying "Mrs.
Down in the Mouth
A faux pre-written postcard which gives some sense of the life at least as experienced by British soldiers in cantonments, even while holding ale in one hand and a pipe in the other: "Dear _____, I am feeling "down in the mouth." India does not agree
Indian Dancing Girl
One of the more elaborately framed and coloured portraits of a nautch girl.
Bearer
Although Hobson Jobson (1903, p. 77) defines Bearer as, besides a palanquin carrier, also as "b. (In the Bengal Presidency) a domestic servant who has charge of his master's clothes, household furniture, and (often) of his ready money.
Lawrence Military Asylum, Sanawar, Kasauli
Founded in 1847 by Sir Henry Lawrence, what is now the Lawrence School is a prestigious boarding school that serves much of the country's elite and the middle-class aspiring to join that elite.
Amphitheatre, Coronation Durbar, Delhi
A nicely framed view of the 1911 Durbar, with an Impressionist's blend of hats and heads, the first and only which a British monarch George V attended and was honored under an Oriental pavilion. It was the high noon of postcards too.
Meerut. Electric power house
A postcard celebrating an electric power plant, apparently in the cantonment area.
How We Make Love in the East
There are few intimations of relations between Europeans and Indians on postcards – or other media for that matter – making this postcard a startling exception. “Stay quiet about it,” says the sweeper in Hindu-Urdu. “Sure,” replies the soldier.
