Description

The author attended the Ivy League Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, during the years 1922-1924. During that time he got free lodging in the house of Professor David Lambuth, Head of the English Department, in return for acting as a butler and making himself useful about the house. This brought him into close daily contact with Myrtle Lambuth, the Professor’s wife, with the hilarious results recounted in this memoir written as a novel. The Lambuths are called ‘the Ramsons’ in the book, and although the famous people appearing in the story are all given their real names, all the Dartmouth personalities are given false names. Until now it has remained a mystery at Dartmouth as to who the ‘Ramsons’ and the others really were. At last the book can be published with their identities made clear for the first time, even though their fictional names are retained within the story itself. We can now see many of them in contemporary photographs, which bring the characters of the story to life. Imbs had a gift for high comedy and affectionate satire, and this intimate tale is perhaps unlike that of any other university student which has been put into the form of a compulsively readable book either before or since. President Hopkins of Dartmouth, who had met Imbs several times, got into a towering rage and had the book banned in the town, and apparently in the entire state as well. But perhaps tempers have cooled by now. – Or have they?