It was supposed to be a bit of a literary pilgrimage; a visit to the house in Segovia, which had been the residence of Antonio Machado, one of Spain’s most well-known poets.  The house is now a museum, and is preserved in much the same style of furnishing and décor as when Machado called it home in the 1920s.  It is a lovely little place; small and intimate as a building; atmospheric of its period; and full of interesting information about Machado, including an audio-guide commentary for those who wish.  And yet, fascinating as the museum was, I still found my mind wandering.  Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s me: I have a problem with museums.  Any museums.

Short attention span?  I don’t think so.  I can consume dense Victorian novels without wavering.  Museums, though…  I find my concentration tends to go AWOL.  Perhaps it is having to switch focus between looking at artefacts, reading captions, and now listening to an audio commentary.  In the end, I zone out of all the different conflicting and clamouring sensations.

Sometimes, I will allow myself to daydream as I pass from exhibit to exhibit; indulge my imagination free rein.  However, at the Casa-Museo de Antonio Machado, I found my mind latched onto an entirely new interest, and not one that the exhibition’s curator would have necessarily anticipated: the poet’s net curtains.

There were net curtains in almost every room of the small house.  Good, old-fashioned net curtains.  Slightly grubby-looking, like all nets inevitably become; rather neglected, as though aware of the fact that they are not the primary interest.  But, in their own way, they were very beautiful.

They provided the frames for snatched views beyond the house; across the fields; to the church; into the street below.  They also cast intricate patterns across the wooden floors, capturing the sunlight and projecting it across the dark boards, like a lonely corner of a Hammershøi painting.

I wondered if Machado had found the same poetry in his net curtains that I discovered, or were they for him nothing more than dirty window coverings, which he would urge his landlady to wash more frequently?

And don’t even get me started on antimacassars.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow finds his pleasures in unexpected places.