Miss Adams concentrated herself upon the preparations with a fidelity and energy that were little short of amazing. One detail will illustrate. As most people know, Miss Adams had to appear mounted several times during the play and ride at the head of her charging army.
This equestrianism gave Charles Frohman the greatest solicitude. He feared that she would be injured in some way, and he kept cabling warnings to her, and to her associates who were responsible for her safety, to be careful.
Miss Adams, however, determined to be a good horsewoman, and for more than a month she practised every afternoon in a riding-academy in New York. Since the horse had to carry the trappings of clanging armor, amid all the tumult of battle, she rehearsed every day with all sorts of noisy apparatus hanging about him. Shots were fired, colored banners and flags were flaunted about her, and pieces of metal were fastened to her riding-skirt so that the steed would be accustomed to the constant contact of a sword.
Although the preparations for her own part were most exacting and onerous, Miss Adams exercised a supervising direction over the whole production, which was done in the most lavish fashion. She had every resource of the Charles Frohman organization at her command, and it was employed to the very last detail.
"Joan of Arc" was presented on the evening of June 22, 1909, in the presence of over fifteen thousand people. It was a magnificent success, and proved to be unquestionably the greatest theatrical pageant ever staged in this country. The elaborate settings were handled mechanically. Forests dissolved into regal courts; fields melted into castles. A hidden orchestra played the superb music of Beethoven's "Eroica," which accentuated the noble poetry of Schiller.
The first scene showed the maid of Domremy wandering in the twilight with her vision; the last revealed her dying of her wounds at the spring, soon to be buried under the shields of her captains.
The battle scene was an inspiring feature. It had been arranged that Miss Adams's riding-master should change places with her at the head of the charging troops and ride in their magnificent sweep down the field. It was feared that some mishap might befall her. When the charge was over and the stage-manager rushed up to congratulate the supposed riding-master on his admirable make-up, he was surprised to hear Miss Adams's voice issue forth from the armor, saying, "How did it go?" Strapped to her horse, she had led the charge herself and had seen the performance through.
"Joan of Arc" netted $15,000, which Charles Frohman turned over to Harvard University to do with as it pleased. There was unconscious irony in this, for the performance aroused great admiration in Germany, and the proceeds were devoted to the Germanic Museum in the university; in the end, the Germans were responsible for his death.
Accentuating this irony was the fact that Charles Frohman had made a magnificent vellum album containing the complete photographic record of the play, and sent it to the German Kaiser with the following inscription:
To His Majesty the German Emperor. This photographic record of the first English performance in America of Friedrich von Schiller's dramatic poem, "Jungfrau von Orleans," given for the Building Fund of the Germanic Museum of Harvard University under the auspices of the German Department in the Stadium, Tuesday, twenty-second of June, 1909, is respectfully presented by Charles Frohman.