mauvaise honte

In that capacity she sat with becoming easiness of mien (for she was as void of the mauvaise honte as any dutchess in the land) [and] bowed very graciously to the compliments of the gentlemen […].

1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC

The practice, from whatever it may arise, is very embarrassing to the mauvaise honte of an Englishman: this may easily be surmounted, when it is perceived that the first visit is always considered as a polite attention.

1826, Henry Digby Beste, Four Years in France, Henry Colburn (publisher), pages 240–242, quoted in The Monthly Review, Volume III, Number XI (September 1826), page 95

So much for Miss Jaques, only as far as I could judge from seeing her in a ball-room, she never evinced any extreme of mauvaise honte – What did you think, mia cara?

1831 June 18, Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by John Chapple and Alan Shelston, Further Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 3

Nothing but strong excitement and a great occasion overcomes a certain reserve and mauvaise honte which I have in public speaking; not a mauvaise honte which in the least confuses me or makes me hesitate for a word, but which keeps me from putting any fervour into my tone or my action.

1831, Thomas Babington Macaulay, letter to Hannah M. Macaulay, printed in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume I, Longmans, Green, and Co. (1876), page 239

Slight improvements in processes,and slight varieties in conclusions, are discussed as if they involved the welfare of mankind. They seek each other's sympathy, and they resent each other's interference, with an ardour of expression at variance with all the sobrieties of business, and the habits of reserve; and old-fashioned English mauvaise honte is extinguished in the excitement...

1875 April, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Photography, in Quarterly Review, #101 (April 1857), page 2