Summary:

Humphry Clinker is an epistolary novel, a collection of letters, that charts the adventures of a family group traveling through Britain. The head of the family is Matthew Bramble, a gouty old man, who is constantly writing his doctor with his complaints and visiting areas supposed to be good for his condition. He is accompanied by his niece, Lydia, who is in love with a poor man, Wilson. Her brother, an Oxford student, also comes along, as does Bramble's unwed sister, Tabitha. Tabitha's maid, Winifred Jenkins, accompanies her.

The group travels to Bath, London, Edinburgh, and the Scottish Highlands. Along the way, they meet Humphry Clinker, a dull-headed creature who becomes devoted to Matthew Bramble, even saving his life. He turns out to be Bramble's illegitimate son. Lydia's lover is discovered to be the son of a wealthy man who is Bramble's friend; they are finally happily married.

Tabitha marries Lismahago, an eccentric captain. Winifred Jenkins joins the festivities by marrying Clinker. Relieved of the feminine presence and bother in his life, Bramble recovers his health, writing to his doctor that from now on he will go hunting rather than write letters.

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Frank Gresham is the squire of Greshambury Manor in the fictional county of East Basetshire. His wife is the aristocratic Lady Arabella, daughter of Earl de Courcy. Because Lady Arabella's and her husband's tastes are more expensive than their means, Gresham goes heavily into debt and has to sell part of his property to the uncouth, but extremely wealthy, Sir Roger Scatcherd.

Thus, it is determined by Lady Arabella that their son, Frank Gresham Jr., must marry an heiress to restore the family fortunes. Doctor Thomas Thorne is the senior Gresham's close friend and advisor. Doctor Thorne is a bachelor who has raised his niece Mary as if she were his own daughter. In reality, she is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Roger's sister and the Doctor's brother. (Sir Roger had killed Henry Thorne in a fit of passion over his sister's shame; the Doctor sent Scatcherd's sister to America; and Scatcherd served time in prison before going from rags to riches in the railroad contracting business.)

The novel tells the story of the apparently hopeless romance between Mary Thorne and Frank Gresham; and Gresham's mother's attempts to have him marry into a wealthy family. Ultimately, both Sir Roger and his reprobate son, Sir Louis, die of complications of alcoholism. It then turns out that Mary Thorne is sole heir (as the "eldest child" of his sister) to Sir Roger's fabulous fortune. Eventually, Frank and Mary marry and establish their home at Boxall Hill, which is actually built on the land that Gresham had sold to Scatcherd.

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In this poem a patient speaks to "Dr. Green," commenting on how much she likes him compared to her earlier doctor, "Dr. Gold," who wore a long face and would never smile. "Dr. Gold has track shoes on" but to Dr. Green she says: "You never seem / to be in a hurry even // though you're so busy . . . . " The patient would like "a little rest / before the next treatment, at least till / I'm stronger."

In the companion poem, "Dr. Gold & Dr. Green, II" (also found in One Word), the physician responds to his patient, Eleanor, who presumably wrote the first poem. He realizes that he himself is actually Dr. Green and Dr. Gold. Even though he tries to spend time with his patients, he now realizes that sometimes he must have appeared hurried and distant: "You tried / to say that each of us has two sides. / I wish I understood this before you died."

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Mr. Pitt-Rimmer is a demented elderly man who lives with his two daughters. They are entertaining their friends for the afternoon. When their attention is diverted, he runs away, stopping first at the dairy store to buy some cigarettes and Turkish delight. The proprietress recognizes him and calls his daughter, but Mr. Pitt-Rimmer again slips off.

He has various other encounters before his daughters pick him up later in the afternoon. "Promise us you won't be naughty again. It makes us so sad." But the old man later writes in the back of his book, "My daughters are keeping me prisoner. Help! I have not had a piece of meat for twenty years . . . ."

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This is a generous and good-natured pastiche of a narrative poem evoking a "typical" Chekhov story and crowded with many of Chekhov's favorite images, settings, and situations. It begins: "Sunset clings to the samovar, abandoning the veranda, / but the tea has gone cold, or is finished . . . . " In the country house, Varvara Andreevna, Maximov, Dunia, Erlich, Kartahov, and Prigozhin (the doctor) carry on their ordinary business in the "oppressive midsummer twilight . . . . " Does Varvara Andreevna love the doctor? Does Erlich love Natalia Fiodorovna? Is anything going to happen? The poem ends: "In the provinces, too, nobody's getting laid, / as throughout the galaxy."

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The title of this volume is taken from William Carlos Williams's Patterson, where the spray over the falls on the Patterson River "brings in the rumors of separate worlds." In the Introduction Coles evokes his friendship with Williams and Williams's vision as the stimulus for this poetry.

The first section consists of poems evoking incidents and people from the author's childhood. The second section includes a number of militant poems from Coles's 1960's work with black children in the South, and later poems dealing with Nicaragua and Northern Ireland. The final section, entitled "On the Day Jesus Christ Was Born," is a set of Christmas poems evoking various times and places in the poet's life.

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The book is a collection of 17 short stories, all of which center on physicians. "His First Operation" is about a student’s first view of surgery. He promptly faints. "A False Start" is about a doctor trying to establish a practice. He only succeeds by giving up the opportunity to treat the richest man in town, as he is the patient of another doctor. He and the doctor he thus honors become partners.

"The Doctors of Hoyland" deals with the issue of female doctors. Dr. Ripley has an established practice in Hoyland and when a famous doctor moves into the neighborhood he is secure enough to go visit him and offer him welcome. "He" turns out to be a woman, Dr. Smith.

Dr. Ripley is outraged; he thinks female doctors are a biological impossibility. Any woman who becomes a doctor must be unwomanly, otherwise how could she stand the sight of blood or inflict necessary pain? The woman doctor is courteous, but shows him the flaws in his thinking. The two are only reconciled when she is forced to treat his broken leg. He discovers how graceful, womanly, and skilled she is and asks for her hand, but she turns him down.

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De Quincey was a well-known 19th century English journalist and essayist. He was orphaned at a young age and sent away to school, where he was successful but bored and soon ran away. He then spent several years living as a vagrant in Wales, then London. In London, he was reunited with an old family friend who supported him financially and sent him to study at Oxford.

At age 28, De Quincey began to use opium (mixed with alcohol in the form of laudanum) regularly to treat his severe stomach pains. Though his intake was moderate at first, he soon became addicted. At first he rationalized the use of the drug. Later, he experienced opium-induced stupors in which he could not distinguish dream from reality nor note the passage of time.

He also developed memory loss and long periods of depression. He resolved to wean himself from the drug and did so, although in the final version (1856) of this memoir he admits to having slipped back into addiction a number of times.

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Sometimes communication is best served when it doesn't communicate baldly and precisely. In this 12 line poem "a daughter comes in late / and you don't say exactly what you feel . . . ." You tell a patient "the x-ray showed / little change, knowing they won't ask / if the lesion's a little smaller or larger."

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The patient lies in the hospital after having a stroke. The "word" is the patient's best friend, but suddenly it's become what "you can't say." "You lie flat / in the white yards of the clinic" unable to find the word. Like a dog, it "drags its chain over the emptied / bowl, barks," but the patient is unable to call it or command it. The stroke victim must simply wait and listen.

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