Morris, Quincey P.
Morris, Quincey P.
(pop culture)Quincey P. Morris was one of the leading characters in Dracula, the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker. Prior to the time of action covered by the novel, he had been a friend of both Arthur Holmwood and John Seward, the three having been together in Korea, and he and Holmwood having traveled together in South America and the South Seas. Morris was the only American character in the novel, first appearing in chapter 5 (along with Seward and Holmwood) as a suitor of Lucy Westenra. His desires for Lucy lead to concern for her declining health and then commitment to the conspiracy to destroy Dracula. He was first described in a letter from Lucy to her friend Mina Murray:
… He is such a nice fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh, that it seems almost impossible that he has been so many places and has had such adventures…. Mr. Morris doesn’t always speak slang—that is to say he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has exquisite manners—but he found out that it amused me to hear him talk American slang, and when ever I was present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny things.
He proposed to Lucy, but she was already engaged to Arthur Holmwood. She kissed him, and he offered his friendship and departed. He reappeared later (chapter 12) at Holmwood’s request to check on Lucy’s failing health (she had been bitten by Dracula). He arrived just in time to donate his blood. In the subsequent discussion of Lucy’s condition, Morris, from his experience in South America, was able to introduce the idea of a vampire bat. Of course, his story of a big bat that could bring down a cow was not factual; the several species of vampire bats are small, and no one bat can drink enough to do more harm than mildly irritate a cow. Put in the mouth of Morris, however, the speech served an important literary purpose, with Stoker tying the bat and the vampire together in his plot. Abraham Van Helsing later reinforces Morris’s statements.
Morris assumed the task of patrolling the outside of the house to stop any “bat” from reaching Lucy. Once Lucy died and it was determined that she had been transformed into a vampire, Van Helsing recruited Morris to join a group of men who set out to drive the prescribed stake through her heart. He was present for the driving of the stake, but stepped outside as Van Helsing and Holmwood cut off her head and stuffed the mouth with garlic. After this event he became an integral part of the effort to kill Dracula. He joined the group as they entered Carfax to sanitize the earth upon which Dracula slept. The four men then split into two groups, with Holmwood and Morris going to find Dracula’s other hideaways in London.
Morris rejoined the other group as it prepared to track Dracula back to his castle in Transylvania. Morris arrived on horseback as everyone converged on the entrance to the castle. Dracula was carried in, resting in a box of his native soil, as the evening was fast approaching. When Dracula awakened, Morris and Jonathan Harker killed him. Morris plunged his Bowie knife into Dracula’s heart as Harker decapitated him. Unfortunately, in the fight to reach Dracula’s box, Morris was wounded, and a few minutes later he died. His last words to Mina were, “I am only too happy to have been of service!” Mina and Jonathan named their son after him.
As Dracula made its way from the novel to the stage to the screen, the character of Morris suffered greatly. As the novel was condensed, the Morris character was the first to be dropped. Hamilton Deane deleted him as a Texan from the British play and gave his name to a female character, ostensively to create a part for a member of his theater company. However, Morris remained absent from the American play and from the several Dracula movies beginning with the Bela Lugosi version in 1931. He reappeared in El Conde Dracula (1970), Jesus Franco’s Spanish version, but as a British nobleman replacing Arthur Holmwood, who did not appear. In the 1977 Count Dracula, Morris was also Lucy’s fiancé, but as a staff person at the American embassy in London. Not until Francis Ford Coppola‘s 1992 feature, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, did Morris’s character, as he appeared in the book, finally make an appearance. He also appeared in Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, the ballet version of Dracula directed by Guy Maddin (2002).
In recognition of his being slighted in the stage and screen productions, one group of Dracula enthusiasts formed the Quincey P. Morris Dracula Society. In addition, Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker’s son, Quincey (named for Morris) was a leading character in Marvel Comics’ The Tomb of Dracula in the 1970s.
With the burgeoning of vampire literature in the 1990s, it was inevitable that Morris would make additional appearances. Among the more notable are Norman Partridge’s short story, “Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu,” which appeared in the 1994 Love in Vein collection assembled by Poppy Z. Brite, and P. N. Elrod’s novel Quincey Morris, Vampire. Justin Gustainis has launched a mystery series featuring a descendant of Morris, also named Quincey.
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