Construction cranes loomed overhead, drills blared industriously, traffic progressed and was abruptly interrupted by pedestrians exercising their rights at zebra crossings, but London seemed at peace with itself on Fetter Lane. Workers walked with purpose, visibly buoyed by spring sunshine after poor weather in the preceding days. I threw my head back to suck up the last drops of my takeaway coffee and followed a sign down West Harding Street.

I was in search of 17 Gough Square, home for just over a decade to the lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson, but I would pass through the lens of the modern day before stepping back in time the best part of three centuries. Being unsure of my route, I wandered alongside a living wall urban greening project on New Street Square, green life sizzling among the city landscape, and approached the building via Gunpowder Square, taking it in from distance and arriving at the front door more in the attitude of a boomerang than an arrow seeking a target.

As someone attracted to the idiosyncrasies and unexpected joys of etymology and endlessly absorbed and beguiled by words – how we use them, to what effect and why – it’s a rite of passage to visit the house of the compiler of A Dictionary of the English Language, chosen by Johnson for its light and spacious garret where he and his assistants carried out their lengthy linguistic endeavour. But life is about connection and people and doesn’t always play out the way we expect, and so it was with my visit.

Perhaps because of its location, dwarfed by steel and concrete development and the only dwelling of its kind to survive in Gough Square (although it didn’t completely avoid the ravages of the Blitz), there is a curious energy about Dr Johnson’s timber-framed, brick townhouse. You don’t need to book, you just turn up and ring the bell, hoping to be admitted. The museum attendants in turn are genuinely delighted you’ve come. Other visitors are happy to talk to you, share observations and their reasons for being there.

It quickly becomes clear you’re all house guests, with Johnson an absent but strangely attentive host, in fitting tribute to the comings and goings of no. 17 during his 11 years there, in particular after the death of his beloved wife Elizabeth, ‘Tetty’, three years before the dictionary’s publication. Johnson filled his home with friends and acquaintances to maintain his mental health in the ‘great affliction’ of his grief and due to an enduring philanthropic streak.

Delicately curated visitor experience materials reveal ‘a love match on both sides’ between Johnson and his wife, over twenty year his senior, which threaten to dwarf the weighty facsimile copies of the dictionary which you can thumb through at leisure. It’s as fascinating to comb through the 42,773 words included as to spot the gaps and difference between our 21st century lexicon and that of Johnson and his contemporaries.

Also on display is an exact copy of a round robin letter, sent to Johnson by fellow members of the Literary Club he co-founded with Sir Joshua Reynolds, petitioning him to use English and not Latin on the epitaph of fellow Club member Oliver Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. Far from being the great round up of annual events included in Christmas missives we think of today, the circular layout of the letter’s signatures avoids drawing attention to any one individual as leading the complaint.

The museum explores Johnson’s admiration for the literary polymath and Bluestocking Elizabeth Carter, his relationship with his manservant Francis Barber, who inherited an annual sum and Johnson’s books upon his death, and the poet Anna Williams, who lodged with Johnson following an operation to remove cataracts that left her blind. It’s possible to argue that Dr Johnson’s House is really not about Johnson at all, but about the circle of friends who surrounded him.

My motivations for calling in, a slice of pure literary indulgence and a nod to hours of childhood spent watching Blackadder the Third on videotape on repeat when living abroad (in which Dr Johnson eagerly seeks the patronage of the Prince Regent but is exasperated by all he meets) had, too, become obsolete. I exited quietly and thoughtfully, enjoying an exchange about Johnson’s later loves as I left the 18th century dimensions and conventions of his home to resume my place in real time.