J. H. Plumb Quotes (1911-2001)

“The appetite of England had been whetted by the rapid commercial expansion. A world of never-ending luxury could be won by vigorous and aggressive action against her competitors; so it seemed to many of London's merchants. That war would bring commercial wealth was a deep-seated belief which influenced English politics profoundly.”

“Men write history for many reasons; to try to understand the forces which impel mankind along its strange course; to justify a religion, a nation, or a class; to make money; to fulfil ambition; to assuage obsession; and a few, the true creators, to ease the ache within.”

“I first read Clarendon at home in an old Boehm edition and then found the majestic folio edition in the public library. Through the long summer of 1927 I read it day after day. It was like wandering in a cathedral – majesty everywhere, not only in the prose but in the thought, in the almost superhuman capacity for empathy and distance which are perhaps Clarendon's greatest qualities both as man and writer.”

“For twenty years Walpole had just held in check those aspirations natural to a society which was faced with enormous possibilities of commercial expansion, a society which had, too, the capacity to seize its chances and the wealth and men needed to exploit them. Walpole had avoided wars and kept the peace because he believed England existed for the sake of men of substance, who gained from security and low taxation, and not for the sake of rash commercial adventurers... England has never known a prime minister more adroit in handling men than Walpole, but he was too rooted in reality, too sensitive to the everyday world to be a great statesman.”

“His violent disagreement with Neville Chamberlain did not spring solely from thwarted ambition or personal dislike. Such motives may have sharpened the phrases and honed his epigrams, but the long policy of appeasement, the weakening of Britain's world role, the acceptance of oppression and racialism were to Churchill a denial of England's historical destiny and, because a denial, bound to end in disaster.”

“He erected a screen against the winds of change, tempering their strength, yet permitting a few zephyrs to filter through: a sinecure suppressed here, a rationalization of tax there. There was no fear that he would upset the structure of government or attempt to realign the basis of power. And when, as he often did, he made a messy compromise, he stayed in power, nothing daunted. What Pitt did was to provide aloof, capable, deeply conservative leadership about which the traditional forces in society, fragmented by the humiliation of the American War, could coalesce. In consequence, they could face the greater problems created by the growing gulf in English life between the political nation and those who held political property, and make certain of the victory of the latter.”

“Some years ago, Sir John Plumb, aware of the threat both to the general mind and to the survival of his profession that the undermining of ancient convictions could pose, in effect advised historians to write the sort of history that helps people towards a contented and more cheerful life. But surely that is to back corruption: we are not to tell what for good reason we believe to be much nearer the truth if it upsets people. Besides, it cannot be done. All history upsets some people: what Plumb really called for was the sort of history that supported the social attitudes, ambitions and behaviour that he preferred.”

“He has always written to be read. He is always as concerned with the quality of his prose as he is with the quality of his argument or the precision of his evidence. In intention alone, such literary concern marks him out from the mass of practising academic historians, and the results of his endeavours mark him out even more clearly. His writing is, for pace, vigour and flow, unrivalled among contemporary historians and sometimes it is held to be too vivid. His figures of speech are not always appreciated by the profession: when he wrote, for instance, of Walpole's attempt to muzzle the youthful Chatham, "As well might he attempt to stop a hurricane with a hairnet", there were not a few reviewers who tut-tutted at the extravagance of the idea and its expression, but fortunately most have welcomed a writer who can present the product of massive scholarship elegantly and compactly and vividly. For his work can convey an unusual sense of intellectual excitement, and its polish and panache make him one of the most readable historians... He is a man to read for the larger scale and the developing vision. He is an historian to read for the changing relationship between political allies and rivals, for the battle between moral scruple and tactical skill in political factions, for the narrative curve of a politician's career, of the unfolding of a man's character in the face of opportunity, triumph, setback or defeat.”

“If boldly conceived, thoughtfully researched and elegantly written popular history is once again enjoying an extraordinary flowering in Britain, it was Sir John Plumb who planted the seeds, and tended the garden, while himself producing some of its most dazzling blooms. From the beginning of his career to its end he never wavered from the view that history's vocation might begin in the academy, but it should not end there; that as an illumination of the human condition, the "interpreter of its destiny", it was too important to be confined to the intra-mural disputes of the professionals.”

“Creative energy is one of Professor Plumb's most obvious gifts – another is his sense of reality. No other historian can convey so vividly the feeling for how men breathe, eat, breed, enjoy themselves, go about their business, hope, worry and die. He is not too fastidious, he has a brotherly sympathy for the lusts of the flesh and the pride of the eye. All his books are written in what the French used to call the odour of the man... Vigorous, empathetic, sane, Professor Plumb is one of the tonic spirits of our day.”

“Professor Plumb is outstanding among contemporary historians in fighting this diminished scope of his chosen discipline. It is shown, of course, in the breadth of his historical interests where his editorial work and his essays demonstrate his remarkable historical range. But it emerges more powerfully in the depth of his probing, and the constantly held wide perspective in which he has studied and made his own a portion of English history – the interrelation of political and social order in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries... Again and again J. H. Plumb brings to our conciousness by inference the triumphant victory of humanity in the last centuries, despite all setbacks, over material squalor, disease and brutality of manners; equally insistent is his sense of the tragic shortness of men's lives set beside their aspirations, of their persistent proneness to cruelty, to lethargy or to corruption.”