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...

The Legacy Trick

The Legacy Trick

Illustration by Author ‘Hero-worshipping’ is a slavish and degenerate way of living dismissed by many of us as far beneath our contempt,...

December at Pace Gallery

Pace London is delighted to announce its first exhibition of the work of Liu Jianhua. Between will be presented at 6 Burlington Gardens,...

The World Goes Pop

The Tate’s blockbuster The World Goes Pop has been met with largely positive reviews. It’s been often praised for the variety of works on...

Michael-Craig Martin: Transience

A sensationalist riot of colour, Michael-Craig Martin's inaugural solo exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery, Transience, is a profusion...

Gillray’s Ghost

Nestled next to the British Museum and free with an art fund card, this celebration of the bicentennial of James Gillray’s death is a gem...

Your SU (Issue 1)

This year kicked off with a cracking Freshers’ Week with nights in venues such as Communion Bar and Drink Shop Do followed by our Autumn...

Desert Island Disks: Greg Wilkinson

This months castaway is the one and only, Greg Wilkinson, our Students' Union President! Top 3 Albums Johnny Cash - American III:...

On the Global Art Market

The global art market is booming, with last year’s sales reaching a record £37bn, a 7pc year-on-year increase and a little above the 2007...

A Courtauldian on Safari

The first thing I noticed upon logging into the iOS default web browser, Safari, is that somehow, and I have no idea how, Apple seems to...

No Artists: Which artist can’t get no love from you?

1. Your lover asks to paint your portrait, you hate it because... a) He told me to pose nude for him and you couldn’t even tell it was...

62

bottom of page