Millican Dalton: A Sublime Midlife Crisis
The relevance of a 20th century cave-dweller to environmental aesthetics.
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
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.
Dalton and Barker atop a needle, 1913. The Mable Barker Collection.
the team
We're The Courtauldian, the student-run publication of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Alongside our three termly publications, you can find the musings and opinions of the Courtauld's students right here on our website. With weekly columns, creative writing, and reviews on just about anything, you'll never run out of quality reading material.
​
Meet the 2023-2024 Courtauldian Team!
editor-in-chief
Abigail Spencer
editorial Team
DEPUTY EDITOR
Lola Stocking
PRINTS EDITOR
Amy-May Brand
FEATURES EDITOR
Helen Warner
LITERARY EDITOR
Carys Maloney
REVIEWS EDITOR
Minna Church
COLUMNISTS
COLUMNIST
Eve Reid
COLUMNIST
Alexis Nanavaty
COLUMNIST
Kathryn Gillespie
COLUMNIST
Nicola Dawson
COLUMNIST
Lara Kazumi Mangano
writers
STAFF WRITER
Fran Margaret Osborne
STAFF WRITER
Frederic Bond
STAFF WRITER
Gabrielle Kezia
STAFF WRITER
Millie Grainger
REVIEWS WRITER
Maria Cicala
REVIEWS WRITER
Mathilda Drukier
REVIEWS WRITER
Qiwei Hou
LITERARY WRITER
Mariam Pari
LITERARY WRITER
Sofia Genco-Billington
LITERARY WRITER
Michelle Hui
ASTROLOGIST
Alexis Nanavaty
Head of Art and Illustration
Sasha Dunn
illustration team
ILLUSTRATOR
Jada Lyla
ILLUSTRATOR
Lola Cortes-Monroy
ILLUSTRATOR
Finlay Thompson
ILLUSTRATOR
Ruijia Ma
ILLUSTRATOR
Zoe Williams
ILLUSTRATOR
Celia Ongley
ILLUSTRATOR
Flora Weil-Perry
head of graphic design
Kit Moran
Graphic design team
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Luke Ray
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Victoria Lucas
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Jadyn Chin
digital team
HEAD WEBSITE EDITOR
Ines Gioannini
WEBSITE EDITOR
Katherine Claman
WEBSITE EDITOR
Amara Mountford
copy editors
Riya Kumar
Thierry Jasmin
Stephanie Harris
Danae Gionleka
Bianca Arthur-Hull
Keira Modi
Hannah Lebow
