Monday 9 March 2009

not much news is mutrix news

Be still your beating heart right at the outset: all I have for Mutrix Road is that there are various Mutrixes (Mutrices?) in Kent, where I assume they are near Quex Park (as below). There's a Mutrix Road, and a Mutrix Cottages, both near Margate.

Mutrix is a name. There was a whole family of them in Louisiana in the 1920s according to some census website. This is not as satisfying as the Quex news, nor the Mazenod news. 'The Mazenod news?!' you cry. Yes, because I have saved a good bit for the end, and the good bit is that there is Mazenod News. 'Mazenod news?' you cry again. 'That's where this whole thing started! It's brilliant you've got Mazenod news! Can it really be true that you have Mazenod news?' I say again: yes.

The news is that it must surely be named after Saint Eugene de Mazenod, son of a French aristocrat who was dragged out of France aged 8 in 1790. He went home in 1802 to try to reclaim the family lands, but he failed. He tried to reunite his separated parents, but they divorced. Buoyed by this record of success, he began teaching prisoners, became a priest and, because of his birth, was offered a posh job. He said he'd rather be a parish priest.

Then he founded the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who were a band of missionaries. He founded parishes, helped aged priests, organised, disciplined and taught. In 1841 he sent his first missionaries to Canada. Now there are 5000 Oblate missionaries in 68 countries.

A bit of his heart (like, gross) is venerated at the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Oblate-owned Lourdes Grotto of the Southwest in San Antonio, Texas. He's patron saint of dysfunctional families. A good St Eugene quotation is: 'Leave nothing undared for the Kingdom of God.'

Just off Mazenod Road is the St Eugene de Mazenod Catholic Primary School. I don't know where the link is, precisely - most of the naming was done by the Powell-Cottons, and maybe they were catholic, or maybe there was already a mission in the area. Diana Powell-Cotton, one of the Quex Park family, did nurse at a Catholic Mission hospital in Uganda. She and her younger sister Tony filmed tribal sexual initiations, which sounds like a story in and of its own.

Other names common to Kent and Kilburn: Acol, Birchington. For a start.

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