The renowned socialite Mary Rose McGill, who recently passed away, had several stories in which she crossed paths with prominent personalities of her time. One of them was the late queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, whom she was even able to meet personally.
Mary Rose met Queen Elizabeth at a reception in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. “The queen invited a series of young girls, 15, 16 years old. When I received the invitation, I can’t even tell you how agitated I was! Because we had to dress a certain way, all wearing hats, of course,” she recounted to CHV, on the occasion of the queen’s death in 2022.
So that’s how she arrived at the venue. “There were sandwiches and delicious little pastries!!”, recalled Mary Rose McGill. Before the reception, she had to learn how to curtsy. “It’s quite tricky, especially if you’re wearing a slightly more elegant shoe, with a little heel, like we all were, that is to say, you have to practice.”
Until the moment arrived when the Queen entered the place and began greeting each of the girls present. “She was with a gentleman who was telling her who I was, who each one was. She asked me where I was from, she knew I was from Chile, she said it was a beautiful country, that she knew a lot about Chile, that she had always been interested in it, that the Andes, the Pacific Ocean, and so on. And if I’m not mistaken, she talked to me about Rapa Nui, Easter Island. That and then she asked me what I thought of London, if I had visited it.”
“She was (a magnificent woman). In the two minutes she spoke to me, she never took her eyes off my face,” added Mary Rose McGill.
That encounter with the Queen left a deep impression on Mary Rose. So much so that some time later, during the Queen’s visit to Chile in 1968, she was able to see her, albeit from a distance. “I told my husband, who worked at a bank on Agustinas with Morandé, that I was going to a jewelry store that was there at the time, I knew the owner, I said to her ‘I want to ask for a big favor’”, to the surprise of the jewelry store owner, McGill asked for something very special: a table.
To the owner’s surprise, Mary Rose McGill explained, “I’m going to put it out in the street, so I can stand on it and see everything clearly when the Queen’s car passes by and be able to see her well, because where I was it got crowded. People came down from the offices, and of course there were no cars, naturally nothing functioned that day, but it was wonderful.” And she did indeed set up the table and was able to see Queen Elizabeth II passing through the center of Santiago.