top of page

Screen Shot 2021-11-01 at 6.28.42 PM.png

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...

Smirna Kulenović: In the Absence, The Artist is Present

Smirna Kulenović: In the Absence, The Artist is Present

This article was previously published in Issue 19, ABSENCE (December 2018). Bosnian artist Smirna Kulenović was born in Sarajevo in 1994...

Jenna Burchell: Musing on Memory and Mending

Jenna Burchell: Musing on Memory and Mending

This article was previously published in Issue 19, ABSENCE (December 2018). One of South Africa’s earliest new media artists, Jenna...

The Life of An Artist: An Interview with Martin Yeoman

The Life of An Artist: An Interview with Martin Yeoman

Martin Yeoman (https://www.martinyeomanartist.com) is a British painter, draughtsman, etcher and sculptor who has works in many...

'Into the Mind of the Coloniser': In Conversation with Adelaide Damoah

'Into the Mind of the Coloniser': In Conversation with Adelaide Damoah

On Thursday 28 March, British-Ghanaian artist Adelaide Damoah will present ‘Into the Mind of the Coloniser’, in the Virginia Woolf Room...

Contemporary Chinese Performance Art: An Interview with Yingmei Duan

Contemporary Chinese Performance Art: An Interview with Yingmei Duan

Yingmei Duan (b. 1969) left her home country China in 1998, after being a member of the underground Beijing East Village group between...

The Mind and Practise of Michael Felber

The Mind and Practise of Michael Felber

Arctic Father - 22.5” x 30”, colored pencil on paper Since the beginning of the new year I have had the pleasure of engaging in a regular...

20 Portman Square, Somerset House: The Buildings of The Courtauld. An Interview with Anthony Robins

20 Portman Square, Somerset House: The Buildings of The Courtauld. An Interview with Anthony Robins

Illustration by Tessa Carr Walking into Somerset House for each visit to the library, for each lecture or class, I am constantly grateful...

The Great Spectacle

The Great Spectacle

Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Charles Pugin, ‘Exhibition Room, Somerset House,’ 1808. Engraving. (Image: Wikimedia commons) If we want...

The Wallace Collection: An Interview with the 9th Marquess of Hertford

The Wallace Collection: An Interview with the 9th Marquess of Hertford

Illustration by Nia Thomas The beloved Wallace Collection boasts a rich and exhilarating heritage, one that is intrinsically linked to...

Curiosity, Collecting and Cabinets - An Interview with Mark Dion

Curiosity, Collecting and Cabinets - An Interview with Mark Dion

Detail from The Wonder Workshop (2015) by Mark Dion American conceptual artist Mark Dion has long been fascinated with how we understand,...

2

3 4

bottom of page