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...

‘I, Daniel Blake’, or how to stand up for yourself

‘I, Daniel Blake’, or how to stand up for yourself

Ken Loach’s latest film, ‘I, Daniel Blake’ (2016), brought him his second Palme d’or and is now finally out on the UK screens. Film...

Undressed: a fashion journey that matters

Undressed: a fashion journey that matters

Illustration by Katie-Lloyd Hughes With its temporary exhibition Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, the V&A celebrates the...

Dear Jonathan Jones,

Opinion Piece: AQA axes History of Art A-level After reading Jonathan Jones' recent article about the A Level art history scrapping where...

Stop All the Clocks

Opinion piece: AQA axes History of Art A-level The abolition of the History of Art A-level will be met with the same indifference north...

Review: Contemporary African Art Fair 1:54

Review: Contemporary African Art Fair 1:54

It's almost tempting to think that 1:54 was deliberately timetabled to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair. Sometimes Frieze can feel a little

Xavier Dolan, Lost in Translation?

Xavier Dolan, Lost in Translation?

Film review: Juste la Fin du Monde (It’s Only the End of the World) by Xavier Dolan Today sees the UK premiere of Xavier Dolan’s eagerly aw

Brex-on, Brex-off - What the European Union Referendum means for women and people of colour

Brex-on, Brex-off - What the European Union Referendum means for women and people of colour

The leading voices on the EU referendum all come from the same elitist, sexist, Bullingdon club. Illustration: Author's own There are...

Frames of feminism; some thoughts on feminist cinema

Frames of feminism; some thoughts on feminist cinema

Illustration:[if gte vml 1]><o:wrapblock><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t"...

Imran Qureshi, Where the Shadows are so Deep at the Barbican’s Curve Gallery

The contemporary Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi describes his own work as a creative impulse to “paint the process of miniature...

'Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky,' National Portrait Gallery, London

The ‘Vogue100’ show at the National Portrait Gallery is proudly boasted as its blockbuster, and it certainly is a dazzling draw. However,...

56

bottom of page