Written for the watsons_woes JWP day 23 prompt: Eat Raw Meat and Dance His War-Dance. From the original ACD to modern-day adaptations, the treatment of non-white characters in Sherlock Holmes (examples including "The Sign of Four," "The Blind Banker") can be racially problematic if not downright racist. Here's your chance to "fix" such a portrayal, or to deal with the subject of race from any version of SH (Sally Donovan or Joan Watson might have an earful to tell you, or the two African-American protagonists of the comic-book series Watson and Holmes).
Timeline note: The Yellow Face was first published in February 1893, almost two years after Holmes' apparent death at Reichenbach.
When I submitted the story called "The Yellow Face" for publication, I never dreamed it would elicit outrage from some female members of the Strand's readership. The controversy was not that Mr. Grant Munro accepted the little negress; that was good and proper of him as a Christian gentleman.
No, these good ladies were scandalized by my insinuation that any self-respecting woman would willingly marry a negro man. "Mistress Effie", they called her, stripping her of the dignity of either of her married names, and cast aspersions on her character and her breeding-she must have been a loose woman, or at least not raised properly, and Mr. Munro had better take a firm hand with her.
I burned every single missive of that ilk, and was thankful for my habit of changing names and locations in every case that made it to print.
I should have realized I might upset some delicate sensibilities; Holmes would have realized, and teased me gently for being a hopeless romantic in not recognizing the possibility. It was wishful thinking on my part, I suppose, since I, too, have loved and lost one whom it was not proper to love. I should have known better.
Even so, I find I am jealous: she has a child, not just mere stories, to remember her love by.