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...

Paul Nash: An Unlikely Mouthpiece for a Nation Destroyed

Paul Nash: An Unlikely Mouthpiece for a Nation Destroyed

'I am no longer an artist…I am a messenger…to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it...

The Jester of Performance: A Conversation with Caz Egelie

The Jester of Performance: A Conversation with Caz Egelie

Caz Egelie is featured in Open Space’s exhibition Forum: Bread and Games at the Ugly Duck in Bermondsey. The Dutch artist transcends the...

Deconstructing the Private View

Deconstructing the Private View

The private view is a curious affair. An open invite to those in-the-know, it’s a chance for the oppressive and invisible gallery rules -...

Playing Host to Istanbul's 16th Biennial: A Highlight from the Pera Museum

Playing Host to Istanbul's 16th Biennial: A Highlight from the Pera Museum

The seemingly unexpected trajectory of storytelling—an amalgamation of time, space, and events—poignantly unveils itself through the 2005...

Christoforos Savva in Venice: An Interview with Andre Zivanari

Christoforos Savva in Venice: An Interview with Andre Zivanari

This article was previously published in the special edition, VENICE (July 2019). For the 58th Venice Biennale, Cyprus is being...

Olivia Laing on the Art of Being Alone

Olivia Laing on the Art of Being Alone

This article was previously published in Issue 20, ISLANDS (March 2019). Following a difficult breakup and a transatlantic move to New...

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...

The Project

The Project

This article was previously published in Issue 19, ABSENCE (December 2018). On the 27th May at about 8pm, I stood trembling before my...

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...

bottom of page