There were two more things to see: a picture of Wiseman, and one of his house. I’d put off looking at them. I somehow wanted to come at them in a roundabout way. I wanted to know everything else before I met Wiseman face to face. I chose to look at them in private, at home on the internet, rather than in the library.

I was pleased that a portrait of Wiseman had survived. It was more than I’d have hoped for. But, sitting in my workroom listening to a child go past on a squeaky tricycle beyond the hedge, waiting for the image to appear on the screen, I was apprehensive.

I’d had the experience in my twenties, when I was researching a film project about consumer protection, of being asked by a businessman how much a new Holden Commodore cost. It was a test: he knew I wouldn’t know. I’d stammered out some ludicrous figure. There I was, calling myself a writer, trying to do a film about consumers, and I didn’t know the first thing.

I had a feeling Wiseman would have been like that. Tough, shrewd, worldly, aggressive—he’d have eaten me for breakfast. He’d despise my soft-handed life, twittering around putting a word here, a word there, making little stories about not very much.

When the image popped out onto the screen it gave me a fright. He was standing at a table, looking directly at me. A telescope rested along one hand. The fingers of the other were interleaved in the pages of a book. He was wearing a dark tailored coat, a white shirt with a high collar, some kind of dark bow at the neck.

And the face—big, powerful, pronounced chin, tight-held mouth. The force of his will! He came right out of the picture, dominating, unyielding. Eyeing the painter as if to say, Don’t muck around with me, mate.

It was a spooky feeling to be looking him right in the face. Almost more real than I could handle. He frightened me.

Then the house: ‘Wiseman’s villa’, circa 1835, unknown artist, watercolour.

The top half of the picture was filled with a high ridge of rocks and grass with a few scattered shrubs, all soft greens, soft browns, a landscape of wash and daub. The bottom half showed a formal garden, surrounded by a stone wall higher than a person. And, slap bang in the middle, a two-storeyed house that must have been drawn with a ruler: severe, symmetrical, floating in the soft blur of the hill behind it.

Thames lighterman turned gentleman. The book is a nice touch for a man who couldn’t read.

The picture was full of details that said I am rich: some high-stepping fine-boned horses, a line of fat cows, yards full of pigs, workers doing various things with all this livestock, a couple of carriages coming down the hill.

A woman in a long blue dress was walking in the garden. If the picture was done in 1835, this was Sophia.