The Adventure of the Yellow Face, by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published 1893, later collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
illustration by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine
this is honestly probably one of my favorite stories in the original canon because it's a story where Holmes actually makes an incorrect deduction. much like a Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes assumes he knows something and is taught a lesson about how even his analytical mind is victim to the biases of his era. The Yellow Face is one of the stories where Holmes has to face his racism.
a summary
the story opens with Holmes pouting about the lack of a case to solve. he and Watson return from a short walk to find that they've missed a visitor that left his pipe behind. Holmes performs a classic deduction about the owner of the pipe: he was fraught with worry and hence why he forgot his pipe, that he values his pipe due to repairing it instead of replacing it, that he was muscular, had good teeth, is left handed, and is wealthy. the man eventually returns to retrieve his pipe. his name is Grant Munro, and his case concerns his wife, Effie Munro.
Grant says that Effie was previously married in America, but her husband and child died of Yellow Fever. she moved back to England where she met and married Grant. their marriage was great! except for one day where Effie asked her husband for 100 pounds and begged him to not question why. he complied.
two months later, Effie was witnessed sneaking out of their home to a remote cottage in Norbury nearby their home. Grant followed Effie and sees her conversing with a figure with a "yellow face". suspicious, Grant broke into the home to find it empty, but found a finely furnished room with a picture of his wife on the mantle.
Holmes agrees to help with the problem, and will travel out to Norbury to see this figure with the "yellow face" himself. He postulates to Watson that the person in the cottage is actually Effie's first husband, he survived his illness and has come to England to blackmail her for remarrying another man.
Holmes and Watson travel out to Norbury a couple of days later. they witness Effie going into the house and charge in. there they find the figure with the "yellow face" is actually a young girl wearing a mask. she's Effie's daughter, Lucy, with her first husband, who was a black man, making Lucy a mixed child.
Effie explains that her husband did die from yellow fever, and Lucy was infected too but survived. Effie wanted to move back to England but Lucy probably wouldn't have been able to make the move while she was recovering, so she opted to have Lucy move later. once she received notice from Lucy's nurse in America that she was well enough to travel, that was when she asked for the 100 pounds to move Lucy and her nurse to England and house them nearby. Effie was worried that if Grant knew that her daughter from her previous marriage was mixed, Grant would divorce her and possibly do something worse, so she kept Lucy a secret for the time being.
Grant picks up Lucy in his arms and kisses her head. he tells Effie that they can discuss it later at home and that he's a better man than Effie assumed him to be, indicating that he still loves his wife and has a heart open for his new step-child as well.
Holmes and Watson return to Baker Street, where Holmes says one of his iconic lines:
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.
an analysis
as i mentioned in my introduction, this is one of the stories where Holmes' preconceived notions are challenged. his initial proposition of the blackmailing husband is certainly plausible based on the information that Holmes received, however it is a biased proposition. Holmes doesn't consider that Lucy survived, thinking Effie to be the victim rather than the orchestrator of the events.
i really like the idea that Holmes is still a fallible human being, prone to making mistakes, making incorrect deductions, and having prejudices due to the environment he lives in. a lot of adaptions make Holmes into an inhuman calculating machine that is always correct, making him into a cocky weirdo with a superiority complex. this story knocks canonical Holmes down a few pegs, reminding him to be more objective in his deductions.
The Yellow Face is incredibly sympathetic to interracial marriage as well, which i really appreciate. remember this story came out in 1893! for reference, interracial marriage was still illegal in the United States until 1967. the UK has technically has never had laws against interracial marriage, however no one can tell me that the colonial Victorian British Empire had a whole lot of positive things to say about people of different races.
this story hits a personal note for me, being a mixed race child as a product of an interracial marriage. its quite rare to find such a view point on interracial marriage and mixed children, especially as early as 1893 when to a lot of people it's still a hot button issue today. i still remember having it brought up as a possible debate topic in high school when we did our debate unit in English class. i'm unfortunately used to callous indifference to the feelings of mixed race children while people challenge the union of the loving parents that created them. i love being told that i shouldn't exist because bigots say that my parents should've never married. that's a sarcastic joke by the way, but it's not funny because it's happened before.
a conclusion
recently i was looking at infographics of all of the Holmes canon published by The Guardian by Adam Frost and Jim Kynvin. they point out that there's not an inconsequential amount of stories where there is simply no crime committed.
the numbers in this infographic add up to 75 crimes total. there are 60 canonical stories so then this image accounts for multiple crimes in single stories.
The Yellow Face obviously falls into the category of no crime being committed, but it does point out that there are quite a few stories where there isn't a crime at all. i can think of a few other at the top of my head where there's just misunderstandings, accidental deaths or deaths as a matter of bad circumstances. i certainly didn't think that number was that high though! 10 instances in this infograph mean 10 whole stories where there's no crime being committed.
this story also isn't one that's very popular to adapt as is it seems. the wikipedia page for this story only lists a few TV and radio adaptations of the story. in fact, the most notable reference to this story is in... BBC Sherlock where the yellow smiley face that Sherlock paints on the wall of the flat. sure. the BBC show also has a version of that quote i pointed out at the end of my summary from season 4 episode 1:
Sherlock: Mrs. Hudson.
Mrs. Hudson: Yes, Sherlock?
Sherlock: If you ever think I’m becoming a bit full of myself. Cocky or overconfident. Would you just say the word “Norbury” to me. Would you?
Mrs. Hudson: “Norbury”?
Sherlock: Just that. I’d be very grateful.
to be honest, i'm almost grateful there's a lack of adaptations for this story so it can be preserved as is, just due to the nature of the subject matter it addresses. i can't say i'd be too happy if someone attempted to adapt it and botched the nuance of the story i so appreciate.
a fun thing though, the 2005 The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on American radio show Imagination Theatre adapted this story, with John Patrick Lowrie as the voice of Holmes. if you don't know who John Patrick Lowrie is, he's done a lot of voices for Valve produced games like DOTA2 and Half-Life, but you'd probably recognize him the most as the Sniper from Team Fortress 2. i wanted to see if there's a deerstalker cap cosmetic for sniper, and turns out Steam users Sith Happens and tasteekakes made that happen:
they also created an item set for Medic called "Eliminating The Impossible" which is a combination of the Private Eye Hat and Nine-Pipe Problem. the set's effect states "Equipping all items in the set causes the descriptions of the Goldfish, Pocket Lint, Cheese Wheel, Banana Peel, Barn Door Plank, Secret Diary, and Damaged Capacitor to change. It also reduces the Medic's mystery solving time by up to 88%, though this effect is purely cosmetic and has no effect on gameplay. " both of these objects and the set name are obviously references to the Holmes canon, which i just appreciate greatly.
just look how happy he looks.
2024 EDIT!
here's some extra content to this particular posting of my review from 2 years ago because i didn't include any other people's reviews on this story for fear of what i would uncover. here is a tumblr post from user wisteria-lodge about the story if you want back up that it's actually a pretty good one.