I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories
34. The Adventure of the Yellow Face (February 1893, Memoirs)
“All’s well that ends well,” goes the Shakespearean title and dictum, and with, the child in his arms, and on his lips the words, “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being,” Mr. Grant Munro saves this ultimately heartwarming story from any number of tragic endings. Lucy Hebron finds a home, one with a mother who will presumably never leave her again, and with a father who cares so much for the mother that he’s willing to adopt a child and face head-on whatever stormy social stigma may come. As readers, we may hope with some basis that little Lucy grows up to live a fulfilling, healthy, happy, and productive life—the sort of life we may well desire for all our children.
That Holmes is mistaken in his earliest theory is no mark against him; his theory is a theory only, and he must travel to Norbury to prove it, one way or another. Such is the purpose of theories and of tests: The scientific thinker must postulate, then check that postulation against the facts. That Holmes’ initial theory covered the facts was sufficient to make it tenable, and, in checking it, he did what every empirical observer ought. Any criticism that he might make of himself ought not be too stringent, for he was doing his job to the best of anyone’s ability: crafting a surmise that covered the available information, then setting out to verify the actuality of that surmise.
Whether or not Grant Munro actually needed Holmes’ services is immaterial. People who feel desperate sometimes take action based upon their emotion, and that’s what Munro does here. The fact that he’s applied to someone respectable, and that someone has listened to his tale, affirmed his concerns, and sent him home with a promise to visit, at the latest, the next day, is sufficient. Munro actually does all the work himself, while Holmes and Watson serve as no more than spectators, but there are so many other stories in which Holmes plays the most active part in reaching the mystery’s solution that here, when circumstances dictate that Munro takes the lead role, the lack of productivity by Holmes and Watson is perfectly reasonable.
While Effie makes deplorable choices that leave her open to criticism—specifically her decisions to leave her child in the South (where the Emancipation Proclamation [1863], American Civil War [1861-’65], and Reconstruction Era [c. 1865 – c. 1877] were none-too-distant memories, and where the Jim Crow Laws [c. 1880s – c. 1960s] were still very much in effect) while she began a new life in England, and to mask the child—the actions of her strong-willed, faithful, and honorable husband, Grant Munro, promise a better, more secure future for the child and save from ignominy The Adventure of the Yellow Face.
