From claret to concubinage, there was no delight he did not sample, or rather indulge in habitually. (p. 242)Why does anyone pay any attention to what this guy says?So Jefferson's wife was in intimate daily contact ... with her husband's concubine. (p. 242)
Jefferson's expensive tastes might not have proved so fatal to his principles had he not also been an amateur architect of astonishing persistence and eccentricity. (p. 244)
It is just as well that Jefferson had no sense of humor: he constitutes in his own way an egregious comic character, accident-prone and vertiginous, to whom minor catastrophes accrued. (p. 246)
As originally built his bedroom [at Monticello] accorded him no privacy at all, a curious oversight considering he had a passion for being alone and unobserved. Thereafter the search for privacy became an obsession in the many changes of design ... Contemporaries assumed they were there so his alleged mistress, Sally Hemmings, could slip in and out of his chamber unobserved. (p. 247)
(Page references to the hardcover edition of A History of the American People)
ML/NJ
Paul Johnson tells a good story, but he is far from an accurate historian.
I don't see any problems with his observations.
I don't think Thomas Jefferson is above criticism, any more than anyone else is. He was criticized quite a bit when he was President.