A new book and a middlebrow peregrination...

I was all ready to post on several new books I just acquired in a little buying spree (my excuse is that it's a warmup for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Book Sale happening on Tuesday—it's so important to properly warm up for a big sale!).  But then, typically, I was completely distracted by the book plate inside one of them and off I went, despite the fact that there are many other things I should be doing today.

The book...

...was reviewed on the Margin Notes blog a while back (nearly a year ago, in fact), but I only just stumbled across it recently.  The book sounded charming, but it wasn't until I noticed a quite reasonably priced copy on Amazon during my little buying spree last week that my resistance broke down.  The book is irresistible, and who would expect an almost completely intact and well-preserved dust cover on a title published in 1958?  (I also didn't notice until just now that the review compared Clover Cottage to Gwendoline Courtney's Sally's Family, a copy of which, as it happens, I ordered in the same buying spree, without consciously recalling any association between the two—my mind is an odd place to live in, needless to say.)

So, the book is lovely and all, and promises to be an enjoyable and relaxing read when all my present woes have faded into the past.  But then I opened the book and found one of my favorite things—a book plate from a previous owner.  Non-fetishists of old books may find it inexplicable, but most readers of this blog will understand that evidence of a book's history—especially when the previous owner(s) must have been as careful and conscientious with it as this one's owner(s) was/were—only add to its charms.

Fair enough, and a kind thank you to Margaret for having provided such a good home to the book before it made its way to me for adoption.  But as I was trying to avoid doing more responsible, practical things today, I started wondering what nature of place Couch's Mill might be, and once I had Googled it, I knew I would lose at least an hour or two that could have been more practically (but not more enjoyably) spent.

Ah the powers of Google:

Above is the hamlet of Couch's Mill, in Cornwall.  It is, I learned from Wikipedia, about 1.5 miles from the village of Lerryn, which boasts a village school with 30 pupils and a stepping-stone path across the River Lerryn which immediately evoked scenes from Margery Sharp's The Stone of Chastity:

In addition, Lerryn is reputed to have been an inspiration for the setting of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. (I can't imagine what it must be like living in England, where you can't spit without hitting a piece of literary history.  How does one ever focus on day-to-day life without being distracted by the fact that Charles Dickens once watched a chimney sweep here and Virginia Woolf once bought a hat there?!)

The nearest proper town to Couch's Mill is Lostwithiel, which boasts a population of about 2,000 people and a beautiful 12th century bridge across the River Fowey:

It also boasts a lovely Methodist Church:

After I had familiarized myself a bit with the environs of Couch's Mill, I thought I was finished.  I mean, Google Streetview wouldn't work in as isolated a spot as Couch's Mill, right?

Well, wrong.  I was able to navigate to this lovely house right in the middle of Couch's Mill, complete with fingerpost pointing the way to Lerryn and Lostwithiel.  And who would imagine that one can even use Google to vicariously experience a quiet drive in the British countryside? 

Alas, despite spending a lovely quarter hour or so careening about the countryside with the Google van, I never located a church in Couch's Mill. Probably it was to Lerryn that Margaret Brown so faithfully made her trek to attend Sunday school. Or perhaps even to that lovely church in Lostwithiel?

But what I did locate was an absolute determination that our next big trip (after Italy this fall, of course) will be back to the U.K. to explore some of the breathtaking countryside.

And all that from a used book purchased for $8!

The only thing that remains is for Margaret Brown to come across this post someday and give us her personal view of growing up in such an idyllic (if perhaps rather quiet?) locale.