From: Rt. Hon. Earl Forsooth K.G.

Montmorency Castle

Rutland

Professor Steve Smith
Vice-Chancellor
University of Exeter

Dear Smith,

Changes at Exeter University

As soon as I found out that you officially call yourself Professor ‘Steve’ Smith I understood why you are crassly dropping the teaching of chemistry and music from the curriculum of your university. I remember as a child in the thirties that one of the under-nursemaids at the Castle used surreptitiously to show me a comic strip in the Sunday Express called ‘Come on Steve’. Steve was an old carthorse, and Steve Donoghue was his jockey. I now say to you, as vigorously as I can: Come on Steve!

Really it won’t do, Steve (I address you thus because obviously you believe in everyone being over-familiar). According to the Times (21 December 2004) you yourself devised this atrocious plan. It doesn’t help that you try to disguise your misdeeds by calling them ‘proposals designed to refocus the University’s academic activity’. Refocus indeed! I say refocus, hocus-pocus!

More of the same when you say (and I quote): ‘The University will emerge in a much stronger position as a result of these changes’. Oh yes? One of my ancestors was Henry VIII’s executioner. He used to say of his clients ‘this varlet will emerge in a much stronger position as a result of my chopping off his head’. He was noted for saying that.

It all reminds me of another Smith, equally crass, who in the 1920s opposed a Bill for the disestablishment of the Welsh church on grounds no less spurious. F. E. Smith he was called. He was a barrister, I recall. He said it was a Bill ‘which has shocked the conscience of every Christian community in Europe’. G. K. Chesterton had the answer for him-

It would greatly, I must own, sooth me, Smith!
If you left this theme alone, Holy Smith!
For your legal cause or civil
You fight well and get your fee;
For your God or dream or devil
You will answer, not to me.
Talk about the pews and steeples
And the cash that goes therewith!
But the souls of Christian peoples . . .
Chuck it, Smith!

Smith, you should chuck this barbarian idea of ousting pure knowledge in favour of subjects such as the following which you continue to offer (taken from your website)-

‘Investment Managers’ Incentives and their Stock Selection’
‘Is giving gifts a “deadweight loss”?’
‘Leading from the Boardroom – Uplifting performance’

You need to uplift your own performance my good Smith. That’s just a random sample by the way– there are plenty more.

Smith, can I interest you in the Idea of a University? Smurthwaite, my old tutor at the Castle, introduced me to the works of John Henry Newman. He wrote about the Idea of a University 150 years ago, and he’s still worth reading. He starts off-

‘If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generale, or ‘School of Universal Learning.’ This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot; - from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter . . . It is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher, displaying his science in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers.’

Well, you get the message no doubt. I’ll finish with one of the objects Newman thought a university should pursue, which is turning its scholars into gentlemen. His definition of a gentleman reads oddly today, but it’s worth pondering on.

‘. . . the polished manners and high - bred bearing which are so difficult of attainment, and so strictly personal when attained, - which are so much admired in society, from society are acquired. All that goes to constitute a gentleman, - the carriage, gait, address, gestures, voice; the ease, the self - possession, the courtesy, the power of conversing, the talent of not offending; the lofty principle, the delicacy of thought, the happiness of expression, the taste and propriety, the generosity and forbearance, the candour and consideration, the openness of hand; - these qualities, some of them come by nature, some of them may be found in any rank, some of them are a direct precept of Christianity; but the full assemblage of them, bound up in the unity of an individual character, do we expect they can be learned from books? are they not necessarily acquired, where they are to be found, in high society? The very nature of the case leads us to say so; you cannot fence without an antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputation before you have supported a thesis; and in like manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn to converse till you have the world to converse with; you cannot unlearn your natural bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other besetting deformity, till you serve your time in some school of manners.’

Yours faithfully,