Eugénie de Montijo (1826-1920)
Filed under the name Eugenie · April 26, 2026
Now, French empresses aren't exactly the topic I know best, sitting out here on forty acres in the Ozarks, but I did some reading on Eugénie de Montijo, and she was Empress consort of the French, remembered as a patron of the arts and fashion during the Second French Empire. That's about as far a cry from my own classroom as a life could be, and I won't pretend I have some deep personal connection to it the way I do with a lot of these profiles. But I will say this — every era needs somebody willing to support the artists and the beautiful, useless things that don't feed anybody but feed something in people all the same, and it sounds like that was her role in her particular time and place. I taught plenty of children over the years who had a real gift for drawing or music that had nothing to do with reading or arithmetic, and I always tried to make room for it in my classroom, because somebody has to notice that kind of talent and encourage it, even when it doesn't put supper on the table directly. Different century, similar instinct, I suppose.