At the time of being offered the Lord Chancellorship, Brougham was living at No. 5 Hill Street, and it was only on his elevation to the Lord Chancellorship that he took Lord Grey's house in Berkeley Square in 1830.
When he gave it up four years later, Lord Grey's agent told Haydon that he never saw a house left in a dirtier condition:
"The bedrooms were simply unendurable; and hidden in the handsome satin curtains in the drawing room he found a kitchen candlestick, and black lead for the grates. The furniture was nearly all ruined by ill-usage and neglect, and although Lord Grey gave Brougham two months in excess of his term to move out, it was next to impossible to get him out, and when he went, instead of paying up the arbitrated sum — for he had insisted on 'arbitration' as to damages — he sent a cheque short of £15. The cheque was returned and in three days the full amount was sent." Well might Haydon add that "Brougham was certainly wanting in delicate feeling in all the common transactions of life."
Justin McCarthy's estimate of Brougham's public character would seem to be a commentary on his private life. "To the close of his long career," said the historian of the Georges, "he was a commanding figure in the house and in the country, but it was an individual figure, an eccentric figure, whose movements must always excite interest, must often excite admiration, but from whom guidance and inspiration were never to be expected."