Wind in the Willows with Cornish link

IT WAS worth only a few pennies at the time, but 100 years later, the first-edition copy of The Wind in the Willows which its author gave to a Cornish schoolgirl could fetch up to £5,000 at auction.

This precious copy of the children's classic is particularly valuable because it is signed and presented by Kenneth Grahame, in the month of publication, October 1908, to nine-year-old Fowey girl Foy Felicia Quiller-Couch.

Clockwise from below Kenneth Grahame; Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; a first edition of the much-loved children's classic, The Wind in the Willows; inscribed by Kenneth Grahame to the daughter of the man who inspired the character of Ratty; an illustration of Ratty and Mole rowing

Her Bodmin-born author father, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, is said to have been the model for book's character Ratty, as both "enjoyed messing about in boats".

The book – coming up for sale at Bonhams in London on March 23 – is signed: "To Foy Felicia Quiller Couch from her affectionate friend, Kenneth Grahame, Oct.1908."

Foy and her parents – Arthur and Louisa – and brother, Bevil, lived at The Haven, Fowey, along with the family's four live-in servants: nurse Annabella Broadfoot, cook Alice Kinver, parlourmaid Florence Tabb, and Fowey-born housemaid Eliza Lakeman.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, son of Bodmin doctor Thomas Quiller Couch, was a prolific novelist and short story writer who became better known by the pseudonym Q.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "At Fowey, from a house called The Haven he indulged his love of rowing and yachting for 50 years.

"Q combined public service with prodigious writing, working tirelessly for improvement in Cornish education... he spent over 30 years on Cornwall's education committee, which was established to create a countywide system of grammar schools."

Mr Quiller-Couch was knighted for his public service in 1910. He was also made Freeman of Bodmin, Fowey and Truro and became mayor of Fowey in 1937-1938.

His friend and first biographer, Frederick Brittain, said Q was celebrated for "his hospitality, his conversation, his humour, his kindness of heart and the care he took in choosing and wearing picturesque clothing".

It's not known exactly how and when Sir Arthur met and befriended Kenneth Grahame, but both men later became united in grief. Both lost their young sons, within months of each other, in tragic circumstances.

Bevil Quiller-Couch was in his late twenties when he died in a flu epidemic in occupied Germany in 1919. Then, on May 13, 1920, Grahame's son Alastair committed suicide, aged 20.

Sir Arthur died of cancer on May 12, 1944, and is buried at Fowey. Foy died in 1986.