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...

Paris, Texas Review

Paris, Texas Review

It would be fair to say that, as a viewer, I’m pretty wary of watching films that I think will push me out of my comfort zone. Preferring...

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night: Claustrophobia and Human Nature in space blockbusters

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night: Claustrophobia and Human Nature in space blockbusters

The title quote for this article is taken from Dylan Thomas’ poem by the same name that is used and re-used in Christopher Nolan’s 2014...

Enter the Experience, Feel it... Instagram it too please.

Enter the Experience, Feel it... Instagram it too please.

During the last six months London has been the chosen destination for Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Chanel to stage temporary exhibitions....

Anna Schaffer: The Petite Powerhouse behind the Label Bibi Bachtadze

Anna Schaffer: The Petite Powerhouse behind the Label Bibi Bachtadze

Better known by her nickname Bibi, Anna Schaffer helms the label Bibi Bachtadze which focuses on small, beautiful collections and private...

Review: Takuya Matsumoto - Places of Colour EP

Ratings for this man just keep rising. Transported to a world of suspended beings, all cares are washed away with A1 - 'Souvenir'. The...

Review: Florist - Phenomena EP

The latest EP to come out of ‘All Caps Records’ from Glasgow’s School of Art is delivered by the mysterious Florist. It exists as an...

Is Jeremy Corbyn electable?

In the wake of his landslide victory, many people on both wings of British politics have called into question Jeremy Corbyn's...

No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990

One morning in 1977, Eric Huntley was opening the Walter Rodney Bookshop for the day, which he owned with his wife, Jessica, in Ealing....

Review of 'Goya: The Portraits,' at the National Gallery

I first came to love the work of Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) when I stumbled across Los Caprichos (1799) at the age of 16. This gave me...

‘Frank Auerbach’, Tate Britain, London

A collaborative curation between the artist, Frank Auerbach, and his sitter, Catherine Lampert, at the Tate Britain, allows for a...

63

bottom of page