top of page

Millican Dalton: A Sublime Midlife Crisis

The relevance of a 20th century cave-dweller to environmental aesthetics.

Wednesday, 23 December 2020

borrowdale pic 1.jpg

At the mouth of the cave at Borrowdale, May 2020. Photograph: Lewis Eaton.

On a swelteringly hot day in the North Western Fells of The Lake District, the gaping mouth of a cave offered itself as a refuge and swallowed us mercifully into its cool damp interior. Caves are otherworldly places. This particular cave, set into the hillside of Castle Crag, allows you to peer out at the gently swaying trees and glimmering daylight of the outside world from a viewing point void of light and sound. The daytrip itself had been to seek refuge in The Lakes; an attempt at replacing the stagnancy of a locked-down city summer with a more welcome, less claustrophobic, kind of tranquillity. We spent a few minutes scrambling around on the siltstone, marvelling at the height of the cave walls and exchanging the obligatory comments about feeling small in big spaces. On leaving, I noticed a large, flat stone covered in scrawlings. At the centre in neat, deeply-etched letters read ‘Don’t Waste Words, Jump to Conclusions’ with dozens of smaller sections of writing surrounding this. Each gave names and dates, with many faded with age and dissolving back into the stone’s surface. It was from a frantic Googling during the car ride home that I came to find out we had happened across a sort-of pilgrimage place for hikers: the cave in which a man had lived out his summers for over forty consecutive years.

In 1904, at the age of thirty-six, Millican Dalton gave up his life as an insurance clerk in London in order to dedicate himself to The Great Outdoors. Having spent part of his childhood in Nenthead, the North Pennines, he found life and work in the capital stifling in comparison. From then on Dalton split his year, spending the summer months in the cave under Castle Crag and winters in a canvas hut in Buckinghamshire. Far from your conventional hermit, Dalton was an active and sociable member of the community. He organised camping excursions for the outdoors novice which included teaching hiking, rock climbing, rafting and how to forage for food. What I found extraordinary for the time was that these excursions didn’t exclude women, with one of Dalton’s advertisements for a mountaineering course stating his views bluntly: “Ladies are welcome to the camp. There is nothing new in ladies camping, the custom being at least 10,000 years old.” This rare indiscriminate approach led to Dalton forging a long-lasting friendship with geologist Mabel Barker, who over the years consistently recommended Dalton’s courses to women students and friends.

Millican and Mabel.jpg

Dalton and Barker atop a needle, 1913. The Mable Barker Collection.

ARCHIVE

Take a look...

Find all our of old features and articles below...

Sale of 268 Pieces from L.A Meyer Museum Postponed Last Minute Due To Widespread Objection

Sale of 268 Pieces from L.A Meyer Museum Postponed Last Minute Due To Widespread Objection

Questionable reasons motivating the deaccessioning make many hope the sale will be cancelled altogether by Agnese Oliveri | 29 October...

Let Them Eat Code

Let Them Eat Code

The UK Government’s latest attempt to persuade those involved in the creative industries to shift to IT-based professions smacks of...

“It’s a bit Chinatowny”

“It’s a bit Chinatowny”

A Fresh Look at Englishness in Liu Xiaodong’s New England (新英格兰), 2019 by Ashleigh Chow | 27 October 2020 Nestled in the heart of...

Art in the Age of Reckoning

Art in the Age of Reckoning

October is Black History Month in the UK by Madeline DeFilippis | 25 October 2020 This photo is Copyright ã 2018 David Uzochukwu. All...

Committee to Dutch Government: Return What was Stolen

Committee to Dutch Government: Return What was Stolen

by Sara Blad | 24 October 2020 Illustration by Elsa Money The 36-carat Banjarmasin Diamond, formerly owned by the Sultan of Banjarmasin...

A Reading of Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel

A Reading of Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel

Nick Cave’s 1989 novel ‘And the Ass Saw the Angel’ is a tumultuous lamentation upon Euchrid’s (the central character) discontent with his...

bottom of page