Mr. Wilberforce remained there about a year, and his successor in the tenancy was Mr. Jerdan, the agreeable and well-known editor of the ‘Literary Gazette’ (1817–50). This house, pulled down in 1846, stood upon the ground which now forms the road entrance to Ovington Square. A narrow lane, which ran down by the west side of Grove House, led to the Hermitage, a retreat of the much admired Madame Catalani during her sojourn this country, and subsequently converted into an asylum for insane persons. This building was pulled down in 1844, and Grove Place has been erected on its site. [Picture: The Hermitage (1844)] In the house (No. 13 Brompton Grove) which stood a little way back from the road, between Grove House and the Grapes public-house, and which was taken down in December, 1844, and in the previous June, when sketched, occupied by a stone-mason, Mr. Banim lodged from May, 1822, to October, 1824. [Picture: No. 13 Brompton Grove (1844)] While residing here, he was engaged in contributing to and editing a short-lived weekly paper, entitled the ‘Literary Register,’ the first number of which appeared on the 6th of July, 1822, and which publication terminated with the forty-fourth, on the 3rd of May, 1823, when Banim devoted his attention to preparing the ‘Tales of the O’Hara Family’ for the press. It is a remarkable local coincidence, that Gerald Griffin, who “To his own mind had lived a mystery,” the contemporary rival of Banim, as an Irish novelist and dramatist, should have immediately succeeded him in the tenancy of “13 Brompton Grove,” as this house was sometimes called. “About this period (1825) he [Griffin] took quiet, retired lodgings, at a house at Brompton, now a stonemason’s, close by Hermitage Lane, which separated it from the then residence of the editor of the ‘Literary Gazette,’ and a literary intercourse rather than a personal intimacy, though of a most agreeable nature, grew up between them.” {48} On the 10th of November, 1824, Griffin, writing to his brother, commences a letter full of literary gossip with,— “Since my last I have visited Mr. J--- several times. The last time, he wished me to dine with him, which I happened not to be able to do; and was very sorry for it, for his acquaintance is to me a matter of great importance, not only from the engine he wields—and a formidable one it is, being the most widely-circulated journal in Europe—but, also, because he is acquainted with all the principal literary characters of the day, and a very pleasant kind of man.” To the honest support of the ‘Literary Gazette’ at this critical period in Griffin’s life may be ascribed the struggle which he made for fame and fortune through the blind path of literary distinction. He came a raw Irish lad to the metropolis, with indistinct visions of celebrity floating through his poetical mind; or, as he candidly confesses himself,—