Dear Harroty
I have been mea⟨ni⟩ng to write to you before yours arrived to Ho⟨ ⟩e, & tho I have not much to say on the subject of Shame yet the small contribution derived from that source together with the original matter in my brain ⟨ ⟩ enough to ⟨ ⟩ 1d worth, ⟨ ⟩ you must take ⟨i⟩t in ⟨pen⟩cil as my tiresome head does not like stooping forward to I cannot remember any ancient or e⟨v⟩en any but quite modern descriptions of people hiding their faces for shame. Indeed I don't think a Greek or Roman wd have known the feeling we meant by shame. The nearest approach to it I can remember is Paris’s answer to Hector’s reproach but ⟨tha⟩t is a mere half ⟨con⟩fession that he is not so manly as might ⟨be⟩ & has not the faintest approach to emotion in it.2
Thersites weeps when Ulysses taunts him but he does not cover his face.3 I think the emotion of shame is wrapped up with our modern sense of personal dignity of which the ancients had no conceptio⟨n⟩— the 2 things seem ⟨to⟩ me poles of the same magnet.
Milton has no face hiding, though he quite depicts shame Adam & Eve hide themselves when God calls them, but there is nothing about covering the face when they are discovered, & in the description of Dalilah before Samson “with head declined Like a fair flower surcharged with dew she weeps” but does not hide her face.4
The only passage I can remember is Guinevere when Arthur finds her & “prone off her seat she fell And grovelled with her face ag⟨ai⟩nst the floor: There with her milk white arms & shadowy hair She made her face a darkness from the King.” which rather bears out my idea that it is a nineteenth century bit of picturesqueness.5
On the other hand (but I dont know whether it is to the point when Uncle C⟨h⟩ asks for quotations to give facts, & of course Uncle Ch cannot care for so very obvious a fact as that people do cover their faces for shame)— Miss Gourlay6 told me when I was asking her if her girls ever went wrong of one of them (they are all the lowest of the low) who had gone to the bad & ⟨w⟩hen she (Miss G) found her in a hospital ran away from her & hid her face & cd not be persuaded to look up till Miss G had to go away.7 Of course she was not one to reproach the wretched creature. I do not remember the Dante quotation I will look for it ⟨&⟩ Wordsworth8
Goodbye dear Harroty | yr affec cousin FJW
Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7059,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on