There is scenery here, to be explored at low water, as fine as that of Kynance itself, if not finer. At any rate, it is of a more stern and rugged order. Mullion Cave is a cavern indeed, with a generous opening and deep black depths which it is the proper thing here to illuminate with torches, or by the more ready, if also more evanescent, method of lighting a newspaper.
Mullion village, away up inland, has a church dedicated to St. Melyan, and some fine old bench-ends; but Mullion is perhaps more celebrated through Miss Mary Mundy, the "Old Inn," and Professor Blackie.
Many years ago, in those days when railways were uncommon in Cornwall, and when the comparatively few tourists generally walked, the "Old Inn" at Mullion was made famous. Those were remarkable tourists in that era. You can see exactly what they were like by referring to old pages of Punch, where they will be discovered, generally pictured by John Leech, in peg-top trousers, and wearing hats like inverted pudding-basins, and long side-whiskers, which they were for always pulling out, superciliously, between finger and thumb. Things have greatly altered since then, perhaps for the better, perhaps not. I will not presume to say. But I do hope pudding-basins and Dundreary whiskers (otherwise "let-us-prays") and peg-top trousers will not come in again.
Those were the times when poets and literary men of repute, walking round the coasts, did not disdain to write tributes in the visitors' books of rustic inns. There were few inns and no hotels, and visitors'-books were rarities. To-day, they all abound, but you will seek in vain for any literature left behind by visitors, whose tributes are generally of the kind I observed at Land's End, among which one person had described himself as "King of the Cannibal Islands," and incautiously expressed a desire to eat the donkey outside, he felt so hungry. To this a later visitor had added, "Cannibal indeed!"
Professor Blackie in 1872 made the "Old Inn" and Mary Mundy who, with her brother, kept it, famous. He wrote fourteen verses in her book—no fewer than that!
Mary Mundy was, I believe, very proud of them, but they just serve to show that when a literary man, or a professional man, writes undress verses, so to speak, he is capable of many lines that not only will not scan, but are also in horribly bad taste. The patronising air, the liberty taken with the landlady's name, are they not insufferable? and the fleshly delight over roast duck and cream, is it not revolting? The verses are entitled: "Laudes Hospitii Veteris, et Dominae Mariae Mundae."
Full many bright things on this earth there be,
Which a pious man may enjoy with glee
On Saturday or Sunday;
But the brightest thing that chanced to me,