In the early years of the eighteenth century, Queen Sophia Magdalena—the consort of that pious monarch, King Christian VI, who went to chapel with his court three times a day and had all the theaters of Copenhagen shut up—one summer evening, after a long day’s hunting, killed a stag on the bank of a tranquil lake in the midst of a forest. She was so much pleased with the spot that she resolved to have a palace built there, and she named it after the stag: Hirschholm. It was, like most teutonic architecture of the period, a pompous and finicky affair when it was finished, built up as it was in the middle of the lake, with long straight embarkments across the water, upon which the royal coaches could drive up in all their splendor, reflected, head down, in the clear surface, as had been the stag, surrounded by the Queen’s hounds. Around the lake the little town, with its employees’ houses, taverns and little modest shops grew up, red-tiled, around the huge royal stables and manèges.
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