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...

The Gwangju Biennial: Traumatic Memory and the Absence of Stability

The Gwangju Biennial: Traumatic Memory and the Absence of Stability

This article was previously published in Issue 19, ABSENCE (December 2018). Celebrating its 12th anniversary, the Gwangju Biennial began...

Woven in Time: The Importance of Anni Albers

Woven in Time: The Importance of Anni Albers

This article was previously published in Issue 19, ABSENCE (December 2018). The idea that only weaving and ceramics art is suitable for...

Family Pictures: My Parents and ‘GENERATIONS’

Family Pictures: My Parents and ‘GENERATIONS’

GENERATIONS Installation View, Showing: Hurvin Anderson, Is It Okay to be Black? (Image: Carlotta Pierleoni) I think I should start this...

Attendees: Please Take Notes on Camp!

Attendees: Please Take Notes on Camp!

When I heard that the theme of this year’s Met Ball was based on Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay ‘Notes on Camp’ I was both excited and...

John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’: A Hard-Hitting Wake-Up Call

John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’: A Hard-Hitting Wake-Up Call

In ‘The Loop or the Vortex’, Kader Attia reminds us of a limitation Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were confronted with as they...

‘Velvet Buzzsaw’: Artfully Dodge this Horror

‘Velvet Buzzsaw’: Artfully Dodge this Horror

I am usually the first to avoid horror films, but the trailer for Netflix’s Velvet Buzzsaw intrigued me. A horror film concerning the art...

Notes on Camp: ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’

Notes on Camp: ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’

Picture the scene. You’re in your most splendid garb, nursing a double vodka orange between the murky hours of 12am and 4am in The Flying...

Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Edward II’ and Tom Stuart’s ‘After Edward’ at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Th

Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Edward II’ and Tom Stuart’s ‘After Edward’ at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Th

Tom Stuart and Beru Tessema in ‘Edward II’ at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (Photo: Marc Brenner) I would not usually be compelled to write...

'Mary Queen of Scots': Women in Tudor Britain

'Mary Queen of Scots': Women in Tudor Britain

As I am currently on the Constructing Empires Constellation Course, I was particularly excited to see two historical movies, Mary Queen...

Midnight in a Perfect World - DJ Shadow's 'Entroducing'

Midnight in a Perfect World - DJ Shadow's 'Entroducing'

It’s midnight. I’m walking home, I see nothing but dark buildings and orange streetlights. Traffic goes by nearby, I can hear the wind in...

4

5 6

bottom of page