that, with his death, Cambridge had lost one of its most influential historians of the late twentieth century. It had also lost one of its most memorable characters.
He was one of a remarkable group of dynamic and charismatic scholars (including Sir Moses Finley, Sir Geoffrey Elton, Sir Harry Hensley, (Sir) Owen Chadwick, Sir Denis Brogan, Sir Herbert Butterfield, Dom David Knowles, Mania (Sir Michael) Postman, Philip Grierson, Walter Ullmann, Peter Laslett and Denis Mack Smith) who made the Cambridge History Faculty such an exciting place to be in the 1960s and 1970s. When one recalls that Joseph Needham and E.H. Carr were then at the height of their powers in Cambridge, that exciting young scholars, such as John (later Sir John) Elliott, Quentin Skinner, Christopher Andrew and Norman Stone, had already joined the Faculty, and that ambitious youngsters such as Richard Overy, Geoffrey Parker, Roy Porter, Simon (later Sir Simon) Schama, John Brewer, Keith Wrightson, David (later Sir David) Cannadine, Chris (later Sir Christopher) Clark and Chris (later Sir Christopher) Bayly were beginning their research careers here, it is little wonder that one looks back on it now as a Golden Age which has not been equalled since. It was (as Roy Porter once memorably said of the eighteenth century) “a tonic time to be alive”.
Few if any could claim to have played a more central role in that golden era than Dr. J. H. Plumb as he was then known. As a hugely influential teacher, the most popular lecturer and the most prolific writer, and as an unforgettably colourful character, Plumb dominated Christ’s and Cambridge History during much of this period. In the final years of his life it gave him great pleasure that he had outlived almost all of his contemporaries, and he reacted to the death of particularly fierce rivals, such as Lord Todd in Christ’s and Sir Geoffrey Elton in the History Faculty, with undisguised glee.
4. Plumb in Leicester: Family Upbringing and Schooling
Jack Plumb did not enjoy the effortless rise to the top that so many of his colleagues did. He often complained – probably justifiably – that the scales of social justice were stacked against his succeeding in life.
Certainly he was not blessed with a privileged or wealthy background. He was the product of a working-class family in Leicester and of the local grammar school, Alderman Newton’s. His father toiled away on the shop floor of a local boot and shoe factory and Jack spent his childhood in a humble red brick terrace house typical of nineteenth-century workers’ housing. It can still be seen at 65 Walton Street, leading off Narborough Road, Leicester. His family later moved to suburbia – a modest semi-detached house near the corner of Dumbleton Avenue and Somerville Road (both of which also lead off Narborough Road), which he felt signalled his parents’ success in joining the lower middle classes. I briefly lived in the same street in 1939, and I was much surprised and mildly amused to learn how much it irritated Jack that my family lived in one of the large three story Edwardian houses at the town end of Somerville Road whilst his family lived in an undistinguished inter-war semi at the other end. I was even more amused to hear Jack’s adult efforts to re-write a more romantic background for himself. On the slender basis of six silver teaspoons carrying the arms of a family in whose service his grandmother had worked, he wove a fantasy of himself as a by-blow of an aristocratic English family. He even claimed to be able to trace a family resemblance. When he later confided this suspicion to one of his aristocratic friends and offered the decisive evidence of his mother’s possession of the silver teaspoons, he was quite crushed when she replied, “But Jack darling, the servants always steal the tea-spoons!”
What was always obvious was that he had no intention of staying any longer than he had to in the social milieu into which he felt an unkind fate had so very undeservedly tipped him. His schoolboy diaries make it abundantly clear that he yearned to explore a wider world and that he had the energy and drive and intelligence to ensure that he would succeed in doing so. Even as a schoolboy he was active in persuading and if necessary bullying his friends – and even his schoolmasters – into accompanying him on cycling trips to explore ancient Welsh castles, historic sites and any available country houses. These he felt would provide his fertile historical imagination with the scope that the humble back streets of Leicester lacked.
The first surviving diary in his archive, which describes one such trip, is the work of several hands (including his first history master, Mr Joels, who later taught me) but it is dominated by Plumb, as he was called by his school friends and, more surprisingly, by his father. It is always Plumb doing the planning, Plumb dominating the talking, and Plumb whose experiences are being recorded. Even the fact that “Plumb’s poor little snub-nose” suffered the worst sunburn was faithfully recorded for posterity. This diary (neatly typed out and decorated with photographs of the travelling party) offers some revealing insights into the young Plumb, as do the postcards he sent home. Some surprising clues to his early self- image and his relations with his parents come from one such postcard signed (surely rather remarkably) with the words “from your only handsome son”. It also contains a rather snide reference to his handicapped elder brother (described as “the Loved one”) who he always felt enjoyed an excessive amount of parental attention, which could more deservedly have been directed to him.
He always felt that he had been starved of affection in infancy because Sid, the elder of his two brothers (the other was called Bert), had had to undergo major brain surgery just when Jack was born. Not surprisingly his mother was distracted by the joint arrival of a very demanding new baby and another son suddenly reduced to total dependence on her. As a result Jack was that very rare twentieth-century infant who was breast-fed not by his own mother but by a friend of hers who volunteered to act as a wet-nurse. Seeing Louie Moodie (the wet-nurse in question) and Mrs. Plumb together I always felt that it looked as if Jack had sucked far more than simple nourishment from the ample breasts of Mrs. Moodie. Where Sarah Plumb was small and bony and bird-like, Louie Moodie was stocky and muscular and mesomorphic. Where Jack’s mother was reticent and discreet, his wet-nurse was boldly outspoken. Where the birth mother seemed indecisive and lacking in energy and drive, the surrogate mother exuded physical stamina and the self-confidence that came from her certainty that she was always in the right. She was born to take charge and she ruled her family with Napoleonic decisiveness. Even on her deathbed when her relatives were trying to tempt her to eat by offering to open a precious wartime tin of salmon, she barked with Plumb-like ferocity, “You leave that alone. I want that kept for the guests at my funeral”. One always felt that there was a lot of Louie Moodie in Jack. He quickly assumed power over the other members of his family (many of whom, again rather remarkably, also always called him “Plumb”). He, too, was never reluctant to take decisions on their behalf. He, too, expected his extended family to heed his wishes, obey his instructions and “do what I bloody well tell them to do!” Like a cuckoo in the nest, he came to occupy a disproportionate part of the house, and take up a disproportionate part of his parent’s attention. His mother always took him morning tea in bed and his father always polished his shoes.
More importantly he always planned ahead – whether for his life, his death or for his future education.
His first school was Narborough Road Primary School, but winning a scholarship to Alderman Newton’s Grammar School was his first significant step on the educational ladder. Known as the Green Coat School because of its distinctive green blazer, it was the oldest grammar school in Leicester (having been founded in 1784) but was by no means ranked as the best.
The history of the school is scarcely mistily nostalgic about its building or its setting. It opens with the words “Alderman Newton’s is not an impressive building. Its Victorian drabness is not improved by the scars inflicted on it by a modern industrial city. Its position scarcely serves as an inspiration to a scholar. The thunder of traffic produces an atmosphere even less conducive to academic work.”
One has to concede that its position in the centre of Leicester was very far from the pastoral ideal of the many schools that consist of distinguished architecture set in arcadian surroundings. The only grass to be seen at Newton’s was not the rolling acres of playing fields but the thin strips surrounding the gravestones that we overlooked from the playground. Newton’s was closely hemmed in by the cathedral cemetery, a large municipal bus depot, a huge hosiery factory, and, on the fourth side, a building works called, to all small boys’ delight, “British Erections Ltd” which operated on Peacock Lane.
I much prefer to recall