by a threatening group of heavies convinced that one of their women had been publicly insulted. The situation looked quite ugly but was dramatically transformed when Jack’s right hand shot inside his jacket. In an instant the circle took a collective step backwards and, against a gasp of “This one’s tooled up”, there was a chorus of “No guns, there’s no need for that”. Jack left his hand inside his jacket, put on what he called his ‘Peter Lorre look’, and the circle retreated further. The less brave of us thought that this was a good moment for a strategic retreat and quietly withdrew, firmly taking Jack (hand still inside his jacket) with us.
To this day I am convinced that Jack reached instinctively for his wallet in the hope that (by buying a round of drinks for everybody) he could buy his way out of trouble, but, in the story as he told it, he had saved us all from a beating by his own quick thinking. In claiming to have saved us all from the heavy mob, he conveniently forgot that we were not being threatened, he was. And he had created the offence in the first place. We were guilty only by association. But he remained triumphant. It just showed, he argued, that he knew exactly how to face down a threatening mob! “Meet force with force” was his characteristic advice. Fortunately the other side, the much tougher looking East Enders, were of an altogether more conciliatory disposition.
Many of his old friends have equally arresting stories of Jack’s youthful enjoyment of a Bohemian lifestyle in the thirties and forties – stories of heavy drinking sessions in Paris pavement cafés which grew so uproarious that Jack would summon taxis to drive the whole party less than ten yards to the café next door; stories of excessively amorous farewells with most unsuitable partners being watched disapprovingly by more up-tight academics and their outraged wives; and many other stories of a free-wheeling lifestyle and abandoned behaviour, none of which would have greatly advanced his prospects in Cambridge.
Later in life, when he perhaps felt that his status and success would protect him, he continued to behave in what he called his “unbuttoned style”. After one uninhibited occasion in Caius, it took a very long time before the College staff stopped saying (with heavy irony) “We know how much your friends enjoy themselves when they dine here, Sir”, whenever I booked another dinner in college. Their comments were the entirely justifiable consequence of Jack’s behaviour after Gordon Winterton’s 50th birthday, which I had foolishly agreed to host in Caius. Jack, in his cups, had paraded round the dining room extravagantly kissing every compliant woman in sight and within reach. He did this to the accompaniment of extravagant declarations of unbridled lust, and, if allowed, embarrassing public manifestations of it. In a pitiful attempt to rescue my reputation I led the party back to my rooms in Caius Court where my wife and I thought his drunken antics might at least be more discreetly hidden. All that happened was that he twined himself around Selina, the first wife of his old friend Dante Campailla, with such enthusiasm that their combined weight completely destroyed a charming Victorian buttoned-back nursing chair. The chair was a much-cherished favourite of my wife’s. Its sad wreckage was a reminder of the (admittedly only occasional) hazards of entertaining Jack Plumb in his cups.
On a later occasion in New York his behaviour with Selina led to his whole party being asked to leave the Rainbow Room. After a very good dinner, Jack and Selina had taken to the floor under the watchful if indulgent gaze of her husband Dante. According to Dante’s account at Jack’s memorial dinner they danced with impressive expertise. Carried away with his own prowess Jack asked his partner to kick off her shoes the better to respond to his dancing skills (and, I expect, the better to balance their heights). Having done so she then removed her stockings (the better to retain her balance on the polished dance floor). Whether it was the public shedding of her clothes, which led to the request that they leave or, as Dante claimed, the extravagant eroticism of Jack’s dancing, we shall never know. As usual, when faced with such problems, Jack’s solution was to order more expensive wine. An order of a couple of magnums of their best champagne apparently appeased the outraged American staff and led those in charge of the Rainbow Room to change their minds and let his party stay.
Such enthusiastic partying in such expensive surroundings was very much for the future. His behaviour may not have changed as much as his friends would have liked over the years but the locations went steadily up market. New York nightclubs and super smart restaurants were all a far cry from the beer and sawdust of his youthful drinking haunts. He was a master of successful social disguise and a master of social adaptation. The man and the methods remained the same, but he quickly learned how to make himself acceptable (sometimes only just acceptable) wherever he finally pitched up. The journey from the working class two-up two-down of his birth via the petit bourgeois semi-detached and seedy pub life to a royal palace and plutocratic pleasure domes was one he greatly enjoyed. When he first stayed the night at Sandringham as a guest of the Queen he used the headed notepaper in his bedroom to write to his friends, saying simply “Made it!”
He loved learning the new rules that prevailed in these heady social circles and loved imparting them to a succession of what he called his “more un-travelled pupils”, even if his own behaviour did not offer an ideal role model.
He first learned the arcane skills of successful social adaptation in Cambridge. He believed not only in watching and learning by example. He also believed in reading and learning by rote. He was the only person I have ever met who knew Debrett’s Correct Form off by heart. If you wanted to know how to address an archbishop, an archdeacon or an ambassador Jack was your man. If you wanted to know the proper way formally to address a letter to the vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, as against the vice-Chancellor of Oxford (not as simple as one might think), Jack was a quick and authoritative source. As for the aristocracy no cadet title was too minor for Jack not to know its place in the social hierarchy. Perhaps – given his chosen research topic – all this information really was necessary. The important thing was that the young Plumb really believed that it was. He was pained beyond belief by my insouciant unconcern with such social trivia. To him a detailed knowledge of the niceties of English etiquette was vitally important. If he was to succeed in his chosen profession, he felt that he must learn to conduct himself as a gentleman, or at least as someone who could from time to time pass himself off as one. He was certainly very well informed on how to behave – however badly he often put that knowledge to use. As the distinguished economic historian, Munya (later Sir Mchael) Postan, once said to me, “How extraordinary it is that the man from the back-streets of Leicester should be better informed about the rules of social precedence and protocol than my wife who was the daughter of an earl”. He then pointedly added, “And how even more extraordinary it is that the man with such an insistence on the rules of social behaviour should also be the rudest man in Cambridge” .
He even riled those senior professorial colleagues who, having received a knighthood, proudly listed themselves as “Professor Sir”, by pointing out that according to Debrett’s Correct Form it was a dreadful solecism to use any title ahead of one bestowed by Her Majesty the Queen. Understandably few of them were willing to stop using their hard-earned academic titles, but to do him justice when Plumb was knighted he always presented himself as Sir John Plumb, dropping Professor because court etiquette expected nothing less, and dropping Jack “because the Queen does not like nicknames”. Such advice did not go down well with colleagues such as my colleague Professor Sir Sam Edwards at their moment of career triumph.
From all accounts the young Plumb was at first more cautious about what he said and did in Cambridge. He knew he had to make himself socially acceptable. And even more importantly he had to make himself professionally employable. Making unnecessary enemies would simply make his ambitions more difficult to achieve. He checked his tongue and learned to listen and to flatter.
The uninhibited street-wise habitué of East End pubs was not the image the young Plumb was trying to project in Cambridge and in the academic world at large. There, he was learning the tricky arts of pleasing such disparate and demanding potential academic patrons as L.B. (later Sir Lewis) Namier, Herbert (later Sir Herbert) Butterfield and George Macaulay Trevelyan (later to be awarded the Order of Merit). The least demanding and in the long run the most influential (on history in general as well as on Plumb in particular) was the great G.M. Trevelyan.
All Trevelyan seemed to demand was that Jack kept up with him on his thirty mile walks and that he be allowed the pleasure of polishing Plumb’s apprentice