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...

Hot Mess: Love, Shame and Feminism

Hot Mess: Love, Shame and Feminism

The Girlhood Balancing Act Written by Lynn Ha For the past few years, in my early twenties, I have spent a lot of time thinking and...

How social media made an accidental performance artist: Gethyn Davies interview

How social media made an accidental performance artist: Gethyn Davies interview

Words by Tien Albert Photos courtesy of Gethyn Davies Gethyn Davies has been a painter his entire life, graduating in 1976 from the...

Parallel Universe: The World of David Devant & His Spirit Wife

Parallel Universe: The World of David Devant & His Spirit Wife

By Pipit Johnson A world of performance, personas, art & magic. Photo of the band in the 90s – image taken from...

An 1860s Ensemble: Battling with an Extortionate Amount of Apple-Green Taffeta.

An 1860s Ensemble: Battling with an Extortionate Amount of Apple-Green Taffeta.

Written by Amos Jevons In the depths of the bleak midwinter, I should like to take a moment to focus on one of the (many) summer...

What Exactly is Bad Taste?

What Exactly is Bad Taste?

Written by Marie Greindl Slim Aarons, Seafood Smorgasbord , A buffet of Seafood at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. Easy to dismiss, harder...

Emergency Column! – A Tribute to Mitzi Gaynor

Emergency Column! – A Tribute to Mitzi Gaynor

Ingenues, Peek-a-boos, and Bombshells: My Favourite Blondes Written by Vuk Winrow It is funny how tragedy often strikes...

Spotlighting Feminism - Tracey Emin

Spotlighting Feminism - Tracey Emin

By Cressie Edmondson You have probably heard of the pioneering, ‘bad girl of British art’ (The Art Story) Dame Tracey Emin, whose life...

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker

They had independence and freedom and even their own studios (can you imagine?!)

bottom of page