The Adventure of the Yellow Face

"The Adventure of the Yellow Face", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the third tale from "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes". It was first published in "Strand Magazine" in 1894 with original illustrations by Sidney Paget.

One of Doyles's sentimental pieces, the story is remarkable in that Holmes' deduction during the course of it proves incorrect. (Nevertheless, the truth still comes out.) According to Dr. Watson:

"...where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded... Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred the truth was still discovered."

It has been remarked Doyle's sympathetic treatment of interracial marriage could be considered extraordinarily liberal because, at that time, anti-miscegenation laws were in effect in several countries. The story is written and set in the United Kingdom, a country with no anti-miscegenation laws, though not without racial prejudice. As is evident from the story, in British socety of the time, having contracted an interracial marriage and having a mixed race child was not in any way illegal - but still was treated as a shameful secret to be kept closely hidden, and whose revelation might have entail very negative reactions. =Synopsis=

Sherlock Holmes, suffering from boredom due to a want of cases, returns home from a walk with Dr. Watson in the early spring of 1888 to find he has missed a visitor, but that the caller has left his pipe behind. From it, Holmes deduces that he was disturbed of mind (because he forgot the pipe); that he valued it highly (because he had repaired, rather than replaced, it when it was broken); that he was muscular, left-handed, had excellent teeth, was careless in his habits and was well-off.

None of these deductions is particularly germane to the story: they are merely Holmesian logical exercises. When the visitor, Mr. Grant Munro (whose name Holmes observed from his hatband) returns, Holmes and Watson hear the story of Munro's deception by his wife. She had been previously married in America, but her husband and child had died of yellow fever, whereupon she returned to England and met and married Munro. Their marriage had been blissful — "We have not had a difference, not one, in thought, or word, or deed," says Grant Munro — until she asked for a hundred pounds and begged him not to ask why. Two months later, Effie Munro was caught conducting secret liaisons with the occupants of a cottage near the Munro house in Norbury.

Grant Munro has seen a mysterious yellow-faced person in this cottage. Overcome with jealousy, he breaks in and finds the place empty. However, in the room where he has seen the mysterious figure, a portrait of his wife stands on the mantelpiece.

Holmes, after sending Munro home with instructions to wire for him if the cottage was reoccupied, confides in Watson his belief that the mysterious figure is Effie Munro's first husband. He postulates that the husband, having been left in America, has come to England to blackmail her.

After Munro summons Holmes and Watson, the three enter the cottage, brushing aside the entreaties of Effie Munro. They find the strange yellow-faced character; Holmes peels the mask from its face to reveal a young black girl. Effie Munro's husband — John Hebron, a black man, did indeed die in America; their child, however, did not. Afraid that Grant Munro would repudiate his love for her if he knew she was mother to a mixed race child, she had endeavored to keep the child hidden. Overcome with desire to see her child again, Effie Munro used the hundred pounds to bring the child and her nurse to England and installed them in the cottage near the Munro house.

Both Watson and Holmes are touched by Munro's response. Watson observes:

"...when [Munro's] answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door."

Holmes says:

"Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."

As noted, the story carries an anti-racist message remarkable for its time. However, this could be considered to be marred by a single small word; when Effie Munro opens the locket which she wore around her neck, what is revealed is "a portrait of a man strikingly handsome and intelligent-looking, "but" bearing unmistakable signs of his African descent". An equally valid alternative interpretation would say this alludes to Effie's fears of others' opinions of her past relationship, rather than any prejudice on Conan Doyle's own part.

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