ATDTDA (18) ‘That is that of which I speak!’ (489-90)

[John Bailey]

Nigel and Neville. The 'two N's' - if 'n' is, mathematically, the basic blank slate we use for an unknown number, is it impossible to employ two n's in an equation that aren’t identical? Mathematically, I've no idea. Please help.
 
This chapter begins wonderfully bilocated – it’s simultaneously in one important paradigm of classical art, the story of Susannah and the Elders, while also framed as a teen movie frat-house panty raid.
 
In the first instance, n&n’s spying on Yashmeen and friends bathing in a river immediately brought to mind the Susannah story, since it was so commonly depicted in Renaissance art (the nudity helped its popularity). The story, in short: old dudes catch Susannah bathing, later corner her and blackmail her with a made-up tale about her supposed rendez-vous with a lover. Some guy called Daniel pulls them up and their contradictory reports about the tree hovering over the meeting give the game away.
 
In the case of this chapter, Cyprian Latewood – already connoting trees – is an obvious reference. But I can also see him marked by Daniel. More later.
 
In the second instance, this is a pretty jokey section. It’s presented with an Animal House sensibility (Superbad for you youngsters) that sportingly treats voyeurism as a natural part of collegiate life. Spying the handily naked women, the boys emit “catchphrases of the day such as ‘Div!’ ‘Whizzo’ or ‘That is that of which I speak!’
 
Did anybody read that last one without hearing ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’?
 
Aside: I guess I was predisposed, having marvelled long ago at the section in Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater where he exclaims, upon reading a passage by an admired author , ‘Thou art the man!’. This was in the late 90s (the 1990s) and it just seemed too close to a then-prevalent phrase.
 
Nigel and Neville end this section on the hunt for opium beer, too.
 
But I’ve skipped Cyprian’s first mentions. When Neville and Nigel first bring up the guy, they sound only passingly familiar with him. They scornfully describe him as the Cyprian Latewood of “Latewood’s Patent Wallpapers? Surely not.”
 
Cyprian is new money, compared to n&n’s old. Monied sorts of any sort should always be treated warily in P’s fiction, but here the N dismissal of the Latewood nouveau riche sets off some alarm bells – these guys putting him down like this basically sets up my sympathy for him.
 
But his fortune has been established by patented – and presumably patterned – wallpaper. A fancy. And so like Neville and Nigel, there’s decadence involved. Not that we know of any real decadence on the part of Cyprian, yet.
 
But n&n are pretty decadent, aren’t they? And given P’s previous mentions of the subject, how should we be treating the pair?
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