In Chapter 23, Thackeray presents the reader with a long string of pathos-laden flashbacks as Mr. Osborne goes through his memories of George's childhood:
Turning one over after another, and musing over these memorials, the unhappy man passed many hours. His dearest vanities, ambitious hopes, had all been here. What pride he had in his boy! He was the handsomest child ever seen. Everybody said he was like a nobleman’s son. A royal princess had remarked him, and kissed him, and asked his name in Kew Gardens. What City man could show such another? Could a prince have been better cared for?
At face value, the emotional appeal of this passage is undeniable: what better example of pathos than an extended sequence of a grieving father remembering his beloved son's youth? But George has not died—he has simply chosen to marry the wrong woman, Amelia, and Osborne feels he must disown him.
This passage is a prime example of Thackeray's ability to inject considerable complexity into his characters and manipulate the reader into feeling sympathy for even the novel's more loathsome characters. Mr. Osborne is a bitter, reprehensible man who cares more for the status of his family than the happiness of his children, and yet Thackeray nonetheless succeeds in painting him as a pitiful, broken man—even though the cause of his grief is entirely avoidable.
