Sahib
“Those of the appropriate status, and there were of course various local definitions of precisely what that might mean, were eligible to join ‘the club’. There were several clubs in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, a couple in large provincial centres, and one in most big towns. W. H. Russell was elected an honorary member of the Bengal Club when he arrived at Calcutta in 1858, and was glad of his guest bedroom and the adjoining ‘dark latticed room in which stood many large red earthen pitchers of w...ater and a glorious tub’. Dinner was at ‘a kind of table d’hôte, very well served. A battalion of native domestics in the club livery in attendance, almost one behind each man’s chair.’150 What proved home from home for a war correspondent at the height of his powers might not have done for a subaltern: Albert Hervey complained that the Madras Club was impossibly expensive. In 1897, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Thomsett thought the club was ‘one of the institutions of Peshawar’, but feared that, like clubs all over India, it had become ‘much more unsociable than it was twenty years ago’.MoreLess
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