top of page

CLICK HERE TO READ THE MONTHLY art HOROSCOPE!

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...

‘History’, ‘Unscripted’ Historical Traces and the Fiction of Ownership in the work of Sven Augustijn

‘History’, ‘Unscripted’ Historical Traces and the Fiction of Ownership in the work of Sven Augustijn

The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the...

TEDxCourtauld Institute: Movement

TEDxCourtauld Institute: Movement

“Tanya Bishop talking at TEDxCourtauld (Image courtesy of TEDxCourtauld) “Movement is existential – for centuries it has been a source of...

After the First Wave: the Continuing Effects of the UCU Strike

After the First Wave: the Continuing Effects of the UCU Strike

On Wednesday 21 March, Tony Eastmond, Deputy Director and Dean of the Courtauld, held an all students meeting to address concerns about...

Loving Vincent and the Van Gogh Mania

Loving Vincent and the Van Gogh Mania

Just like the bad boy Caravaggio, the legendary Jackson Pollock, or the eccentric Andy Warhol, van Gogh has become a sacred figure in the...

In the future we stood apart

In the future we stood apart

Illustration by Matthew Page and Cyril Babeev It was between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when western societies developed the...

Hello, world. I’m whatever you want me (you) to be.

Hello, world. I’m whatever you want me (you) to be.

Ghost in the Shell, Dir. Mamoru Oshii (Manga Entertainment. 1995) The advent of sophisticated robotics in the form of Sophia – produced...

Communication Revolution: The Semiotics of Social Media

Communication Revolution: The Semiotics of Social Media

Fig. 1 There is a lot to unpack in the screenshots on the opposite page, and I think I speak for many when I say there is a lot I'd like...

Dead Tired

Dead Tired

Symptoms of Information Overload Grosse Fatigue (Dead Tired), Camille Henrot, 2013, video, 13 minutes, Silex Film and Galerie Kamel...

Making Home in Filippiada

Making Home in Filippiada

The Filippiada refugee camp is a few minutes outside of Filippiada, a town in north west Greece. From its road entrance, a cabin and a...

DISCOVER: APTART

DISCOVER: APTART

For the next few months, ten floors of Tate Modern will be dedicated to the work of the Russian conceptual artists, Ilya and Emilia...

8

bottom of page