I have taken a temporary step back from writing in order to take another systematic trawl through the more than 4,000 archival photographs I have in an effort to make sure that I don’t miss anything important when I do return to writing. The difficulty, of course, is knowing what is important and where important information is likely to be. Each time I take such a trawl, I learn new and surprising things, which reinforces the anxiety that I can never understand Macintosh fully unless I read every scrap of paper in his archive—an unrealistic task that would take me another ten years and would drive me to distraction!

One such discovery today was made in the large folder of receipts which offer an always-interesting snapshot into the purchasing habits of Macintosh and his family. One receipt in particular—for ribbons and gloves purchased by Macintosh’s wife, Ann, in 1778—is fascinating for what it reveals about the nature of the relationship between the couple.

At the bottom of the receipt is a short narrative, dated 2 March 1781 and composed at the point at which Macintosh settled the bill. It reveals that he and Ann had, at this point, “been near four years separated, by mutual consent”. I had long suspected this must be the case, but I had never before found direct evidence of the fact (beyond Ann being described as a widow, even before Macintosh’s death). It is helpful to have some evidence of the toll Macintosh’s political activity and global mobility exerted on his family, but I do wonder what other revelatory snippets are still there, waiting to be discovered.