[Illustration: Mata Hari]
MATA HARI
_Courtesan and Spy_
By
MAJOR THOMAS COULSON, O.B.E.
[Illustration: Emblem showing a laurel wreath surrounding a flaming
torch held upright between two outstretched hands, with Greek text
inside the wreath.]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
_New York and London_
1930
MATA HARI
_Copyright, 1930, by Harper & Brothers_
_Printed in the U. S. A._
SEVENTH PRINTING
EIGHTH PRINTING
G-E
_Illustrations are from the collection of
W. Adolphe Roberts_
_To
MITSOU_
_Preface_
The romantic adventures of Mata Hari stirred a certain section of public
opinion to a sympathy rarely accorded to spies. The men and women of
that profession are usually the object of general execration from their
enemies and a somewhat furtive admiration from others who extract
pleasure or consolation from the pursuit of danger, where the degree and
not the motive is the standard. Why, then, should this vaudeville “star”
have excited a contrary emotion? Why should she have as defenders:
princes, statesmen, savants, and artists, as well as genial
_boulevardiers_ who, if lacking in a supersensitive morality, are
without doubt loyal citizens of the nation to which Mata Hari did
incalculable harm?
In the first place, Mata Hari was a woman of unusual beauty, moving
within a veil of sensual mysticism; in the second place, her chosen
forum was Paris. The attention she had drawn as an artist and her subtle
personality account for much of the interest she aroused. The fact that
a Frenchman is never too fat, too old, or too ugly to be interested in a
pretty (and frail) woman supplies the remainder of the answer to the
problem. The average woman spy, outside of the popular romances, is not
a lovable creature. But, endowed with a romantic nature, a rich
imagination, a flair for the sensational, the sentimental, and the
poetic, preaching a gospel of love which had to be communicated in
whispered confidences, has this woman not all the characteristics of an
ideal heroine for a successful novel?
Since the life and death of Mata Hari have become the common property of
writers for the stage and more particularly for the screen, her
fascinating history as a super-spy, dancer, courtesan, and
high-priestess of a lascivious love cult with its wealth of drama,
romance, and bitter tragedy, has been submerged beneath a torrent of
highly imaginative literature which almost completely obscures the
truth. No spy story is too absurd to be associated with her name; no
deep-rooted intrigue too treacherous but that it becomes the more
sinister by being made to revolve about her person. For the most part
these flights of the artistic imagination bear too unmistakably the
stamp of their manufacture to be worth exposing, but others, more subtly
constructed, have passed into the current coin of espionage legend
without any better claim to authenticity. The life of Mata Hari is
romantic enough to require no embellishment, so that in the following
narrative imagination plays no part in the drama it unfolds. No effort
has been made to invent situations or conversations to promote the easy
flow of the story.
Certain phases of Mata Hari’s life are inexplicable to those
unaccustomed to the methods and practices of the secret services, and
for this reason I have tried to illustrate the story with examples of
other spies’ experiences. This knowledge of the German espionage work
was collected while a regimental intelligence officer in Ireland,
England, and France. The quoted examples of other spies are stories told
me, for the most part, by men who were actually engaged in the work of
counter-espionage which revealed their activities. It has been suggested
that the narrative would be more convincing if the names of certain
actors in the sensational story had appeared in the text. This could
only have been done if the great game had terminated with the other
hostilities on November 11, 1918. Unfortunately, that is not so. The
scenes change, the task varies, but the work goes on. Reticence on
certain points became not merely a matter of discretion, but of life and
death to some of the men still engaged in the work of counter-espionage.
For instance, allusion is made in the text to a Russian courier who
carried a draft treaty in the barrel of his fountain pen. I have been
asked who was the courier and what treaty did he carry. To reveal these
details would most certainly lead to the imprisonment, possibly the
death, of a man who is still actively engaged in this dangerous work. It
might be urged that the mere mention of the extraordinary hiding-place
is evidence enough to betray the main characters. Happily it is not. But
danger lies in the explanation. For purely diplomatic reasons other
details may not yet be revealed, as will be understood from a reading of
the text; too many trusted and influential people are involved. It is a
great gulf that separates the foyers of the elegant Champs-Élysées from
the bivouac fires; the vicious luxury of the _demi-monde_, sipping its
cocktail with nice enjoyment, from the beer-swigging soldiers in the
canteens; the lascivious dances of the worship of Siva from the grim
Dance of Death on the crumbling parapets, where riven bodies were a
commonplace. Yet over this yawning gulf between selfish lust and heroic
self-sacrifice went the fluttering feet of the Red Dancer and her
partner, Death, and the injury she did was tragic enough without adding
to it by exposing people who, through accident or indiscretion, became
involved.
T. C.
_Mata Hari_
COURTESAN AND SPY
_Chapter One_
The first time I heard the name of Mata Hari was in the fall of 1916.
The association of her name with the inexplicable leakage of highly
confidential information will best reveal how the woman’s sinister
activities reacted upon men far removed from her physical existence. It
will help to show why a spy incurs such deadly hatred among men not
disinclined to face death when the danger may be boldly grasped, but who
shudder with apprehension when some nameless and invisible enemy tries
to encompass their destruction under the veil of assumed friendship
which promotes an attitude of indifference among those whose duty it is
to guard against such concealed activity.
Picture, then, a group of English soldiers straining their eyes into the
abyss of night, waiting for the firing of a Verey light which will
illumine a phenomenon just come within their knowledge. A patrol has
just returned with the information that something mysterious has
appeared in No Man’s Land that demands investigation. Scarcity of
numbers in this sector had made increased watchfulness imperative and
there was not a man among them who did not know No Man’s Land as
intimately as he knew the details of his own back yard. But night plays
fantastic tricks with the imagination and the eyes, so that when this
newly returned patrol made its report there was no little uneasiness
about the mysterious object set before their trench. Complete
investigation, however, proved that this was no more than a crude
notice-board bearing the scrawled enquiry, “Why wait for the 29th?”
Thus it came about that the bursting indiscretion of a mischievous Saxon
soldier undid the work of a cunning spy. But we, who were the victims of
the joke, were completely bewildered by this singular message which had
come out of the night. Nor could our staff offer any enlightenment when
we applied to them for an explanation. They were too busy with
statistical computations of the consumption of plum and apple jam to
gratify the misplaced curiosity of an enemy whose sense of humour
usually had a more _macabre_ touch. The incident would have been
overlooked among more pressing anxieties and a tragedy would have
resulted but for a chance visit the following day to some men who were
training in the strictest seclusion for a special minor offensive.
These men were of my own company and at my suggestion were being trained
for a night raid in full daylight. Night training is usually rendered
farcical by the impossibility of adequate supervision, but with darkness
simulated by the use of dark glasses we hoped to achieve a greater
degree of efficiency. The work of these men was conducted in the utmost
secrecy. No one other than about six officers had any idea of either the
purpose, the locale, or the time of the raid. Living in such isolation,
the raiders were always delighted to receive their rare visitors and
listened with delight to the most trifling details of our battalion
activities. As most people whose lives are anything but a joke are
usually entertained by the feeblest jests, I was tempted to tell them of
the enemy’s enigmatic enquiry, “Why wait for the 29th?”
The recital of this incident caused as much consternation as would have
arisen in paradise had the devil dropped in for a social visit. Except,
of course, for the blasphemy; that was supplemental, presumably. It
appeared that the 29th was the date chosen for the secret raid and that
our sector was to be the scene of the outburst. It was then the 26th. In
spite of this unexpected betrayal after such elaborate precautions to
maintain secrecy, the raid was carried out according to program in all
its details except for the date. On the night of the 27th these men
crept quietly out of the trenches, over No Man’s Land, and fell on an
enemy taken completely by surprise. It would have been an unqualified
success but for the unfortunate death of the young officer in command.
On the return from the raid he was shot in the thigh and I was carrying
him back to our trenches, when a bullet whipped through the night,
penetrated his throat, and embedded itself in my shoulder. Just at the
moment this happened he was about to tell me some secret of his last
leave in Paris and his lips had just framed the words, “If we could only
find that damned dancer ...” when they were closed by the great silence
and his eyes turned to that dawn which knows no eventide.
During a convalescence spent in France, I investigated the circumstances
of young Hogg’s last leave and its association with a dancer, never for
one moment imagining that it would lead to a definite result, since
dancers are as numerous as thieves in the City of Light. What I did
discover had no meaning at the time, but its significance was too great
to be forgotten.
In order to obtain the dark glasses which I had recommended for the
training of his men, Hogg and a companion had gone to Paris as being the
only place within reach likely to furnish this extraordinary need. The
pair of youngsters had little or no knowledge of the city and their
ignorance of the language made the simplest purchase as laborious as a
complicated commercial transaction. They, therefore, addressed
themselves to any chance acquaintance for information concerning
spectacle-makers, but, thanks to the direction of their enquiries, their
request was received as something of a pleasantry by everyone whom they
encountered. Their mission was soon being passed from one malicious
little tongue to another along café terraces until their appearance was
hailed with delight in the more popular rendezvous. At last when they
were becoming desperate, and therefore more amusing, one amiable lady
volunteered her assistance. After a brief interview Hogg consented to
accompany her on the quest for dark glasses. There were, I found,
certain hectic celebrations attending the successful execution of the
commission on which neither of the young officers retained clear
recollections—when the stomach is full the head is empty. They returned
to their posts satisfied that the amiable and kind lady would collect
and forward the required glasses as soon as they were ready.
It was possible, at a later date, and with more evidence available, to
ascertain how the terrible Mata Hari did her work. In order to learn
where and when this raid was to take place she had to delay the dispatch
of the dark glasses until after the two young officers had finished
their short leave, and to accept the responsibility of forwarding them
when they were delivered by the optician who had undertaken to secure
them. For this reason she was furnished with the correct address of the
unit to which they were to be sent, and the enemy was thus able to
identify the locale of the raid. The correct date she ascertained by
feigning a great interest in the exploit and a desire to read of its
successful accomplishment in the communiqué issued the following day.
Those of us who were amazed at her ability to obtain such confidential
information ceased to wonder at Mata Hari’s skill in this case when we
became familiar with her major activities exercised against more capable
protagonists than two young subalterns.
The words spoken in the presentiment of death are often prophetic.
Months later, when Mata Hari was under trial for espionage, the writer
heard her spoken of as the “Red Dancer,” and the mystery of “Why wait
for the 29th?” became a fragment of an infinitely greater quest which
led to the revelation of the entire life of the woman who was registered
in the German secret service as H21 and who sent thousands like this
young colleague to their death.
_Chapter Two_
This is the Reverse of the Medal. What of its obverse? The story of the
spy H21 is incomprehensible without a knowledge of the “Red Dancer.”
Unless one understands the extraordinary power of fascination she
exercised it is not possible to believe that she could reduce the Second
Bureau, the nerve centre of the French army, to temporary impotence;
could correspond with her espionage chief on paper that bore the heading
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; could have conducted an intimate
intrigue with the head of the War Department; and when an outraged army
finally brought her to trial and condemnation, could yet invoke the aid
of princes, ambassadors, and scholars. It is only by a knowledge of what
she called her artistic life that one can realize the nature and extent
of her fatal sorcery. It explains, too, why a band of enthusiastic
pseudo-intellectuals are still endeavouring to invest her with an
aureole of martyrdom, for she claimed the attributes of a high-priestess
of an ancient but little-known religion, and her adorers are willing to
place her in that office within their own degenerate cult.
Not all her believers are to be classed in this coterie. There still
lingers a select band of irreconcilables who steadfastly maintain that
Mata Hari’s claims to be a _bayadère_ were perfectly genuine. One still
meets in the Parisian haunts of the pseudo-intellectuals an occasional
visitor who whispers that on a recent visit to a remote _schloss_ in a
secluded part of Austria he was privileged to attend a repetition of one
of these religious ceremonies dedicated to the god Siva and presided
over by Mata Hari. His words fall on believing ears and there are
murmurs of regret that France should have been the chosen instrument for
inflicting punishment upon this faithful disciple.
In order to realize how she accomplished these astonishing feats one has
to have a picture of her in one of her favourite séances, not a
vaudeville appearance this time (for her public appearances were only
gestures to the mob of unbelievers), but the type of occasion from which
she extracted most enjoyment and most wealth, and which was the
foundation of her amazing power over men of position and influence. It
is such a scene as might be witnessed in the intimacy of the elegant
palaces of, say, the Prince Drago, the Princess Murat, or the Duchess of
Eckmühl. In the voluptuous abandon of the semi-privacy, before a group
of selected guests, reclining in luxurious ease after copious
sacramental libations and surrounded by her worshippers, Mata Hari
invokes the image of her youth.
“I was born,” she says in a soft, languorous tone which the listeners
immediately associated with the mysterious East, “in the south of India
on the coast of Malabar, in the holy city of Jaffnapatam, the child of a
family within the sacred caste of Brahma. By reason of his piety and
pureness of heart my father was called _Assirvadam_, which means ‘The
Blessing of God.’ My mother was a glorious _bayadère_[1] in the temple
of Kanda Swany. She died when she was fourteen, on the same day I was
born. The priests of the temple, having cremated my mother, adopted me
under the baptismal name of Mata Hari, which means ‘Eye of the Dawn.’
From the time when I took my first uncertain steps I was shut up in the
great subterranean hall of the pagoda of Siva, where I was to be trained
to follow in my mother’s footsteps through the holy rites of the dance.
Of these early years my mind retains only vague recollections of a
monotonous existence in which, during the long morning hours, I was
taught to imitate automatically the movements of the _bayadères_, and in
the afternoons was allowed to walk in the gardens while weaving garlands
of jasmine for decorating the altars. When I reached the threshold of
womanhood my foster-mother saw in me a predestined soul and resolved to
dedicate me to Siva and to reveal to me the mystery of love and faith on
the night of Sakty-pudja, in the coming spring....”
Footnote 1:
The _bayadères_ must not be confused with the _nautch_ dancers. The
former are ministrants in the temples and enjoy the respect of the
worshippers. _Nautch_ dancers, on the other hand, are merely
professional dancers engaged to furnish entertainment.
The soft, caressing voice trails off into silence, and at the
recollection of this blissful moment a tremor of religious ecstasy
passes over the exquisitely moulded, amber-tinted body, daringly
revealed for these nocturnal invocations of her sacred youth. Then
suddenly she awakens from her reverie to ask:
“Have any of you an idea of the Sakty-pudja of the Kanda Swany?”
The hypnotized audience, which on occasion included well-known
Orientalists, are compelled to reply that they possess no intimate
knowledge of this festivity of license and religious revelry, so she
proceeds to enlighten them.
“It was on the purple granite altar of the Kanda Swany that, at the age
of thirteen, I danced for the first time, completely nude.”
Then, in the midst of the superb luxury of her wealthy patron’s home,
inspired by the rich food, by the wines, by the seductive lights, by the
sensuous perfumes (all prearranged) she begins to explain the mysteries
of the Supreme Night on which the holy men of the temple savour in life
the cruel but divine ecstasies of Siva’s paradise, that terrible god
Siva who is the god of all sin, of all misunderstanding, of all cruelty.
This recital is illustrated by poses and gestures more provocative than
plain speech. The earlier stages of this fantastic orgy which she
describes are devoted to meditation in an atmosphere of subtle drugs and
Oriental languors. As the awaited moment approaches, when the wise men
will announce the appearance in the heavens of the sign of the Three
Goddesses, the melodious notes of a concealed orchestra begin to breathe
haunting, dreamy harmonies. From the dark recesses of the waving jungle
a soft voice warns of the awakening of the sacred serpents, who, tempted
by the seductive murmur of the instruments, writhe their long slow
length to the temple where Siva awaits their homage. And there they
dance! Among them whirl the curving, undulating bodies of the dainty
little _bayadères_, as clammily chill and as naked as the serpents. The
remainder of this festivity is indescribable; it eclipses the
bacchanalian fêtes of decadent Rome.
This is the beginning of the legend which has grown up about the modern
high-priestess of the dance as a religious rite. In conversation with
her many admirers she outlines her life as she would have wished it to
be. Having no hand in its origin, the next best thing is to prepare the
origin which is best adapted to the rôle she has assumed. The rest
followed naturally in a romantic sequence which satisfied her love of
the dramatic. Mata Hari told how she followed her profession in the
temple until one day a handsome English officer saw her performance and,
struck by the sadness of her eyes, ventured to violate the sacred rules
of her caste by speaking to her. In accordance with the requirements of
romance, they fell in love with each other and the adventurous officer
by a display of cunning, courage, and resource rescued the little Mata
Hari from the prospect of a life devoted to the adoration of the god
Siva, and married her. Shortly after their marriage a son, Norman, was
born, and by her own account the young mother’s cup of happiness was
filled to the brim with this new rapture. However, she said, the child
did not live long, for a typically Oriental act of poisoning resulted in
his death. During a visit to America Mata Hari described in some detail
how this tragedy so infuriated her that the savage within her nature
rose in revolt, so that with her own hands she strangled the unfaithful
servant who had given the child the poisoned cup.
Thus her own account gives to her life a current of vibrant, barbaric
adventure, heavily coloured by the mystery and romance of the unknown
East, which was rendered all the more plausible by nature’s gifts. For
this Dutch girl, born in Holland of homely parents, was endowed with a
strangely Oriental cast of countenance and an amber-tinted body which
she inherited, not from her Hindu parents, but from Jewish progenitors.
_Chapter Three_
“On the purple granite altar of the Kanda Swany, at the age of thirteen
I was initiated.... When I danced before the rajahs on the banks of the
sacred Ganges....”
These and similar phrases were continually on the lips of Mata Hari as
she sought to bind her audiences, or even individuals, for anything with
ears to hear was sufficient audience for her, by the fascination of her
intimate and secret knowledge of art, beauty, and love. However, there
are two counterweights to her highly imaginative narrative which enable
us to obtain a much truer picture of her earlier life and actions. One
is her own _Life_ and the other the brief, frigidly cold, official
biography collected by the French police. With the aid of these and the
accounts of friends and witnesses it is possible to construct a fairly
comprehensive story of her life, the life of Mata Hari, Red Dancer and
H21 of the German secret service.
The _Life_ is a well-printed volume which enjoys the scarcity of some
rare incunabula. It was published in 1906 and the title page reads, in
translation: “Mata Hari: Mrs. M. G. Zelle MacLeod. History of my
daughter’s life and my charges against her former husband, with
portraits, documents, facsimiles, and supplements, by A. Zelle, czm—C.
L. G. Velat, Amsterdam.” But in spite of the clear attribution of
authorship to the mother, a naïve prefatory note declares that “the
earlier chapters of this book have been entirely written by my daughter.
As for the later ones, since she lacked the time to finish them herself,
they were sent to me from America for completion.” The story is too
obviously directed against the errant husband to carry much weight as a
serious autobiography, and it has only been used by the present writer
to corroborate other testimony or to illustrate her thoughts. While we
must follow the creation of the legend of Mata Hari, the time has come
when she should be stripped of all her improvised art and her specially
invented sacred origins and to judge her as a woman. If she is guilty of
the crimes attributed to her, if her deeds brought death and maiming to
men, tears and mourning to their innocent relatives, then no artistry,
no amorous frailty, no pseudo-sacred origin, no peculiar mental
viewpoint can condone or mitigate her sin.
The real Mata Hari was born in the little Dutch town of Leeuwarden on
August 7, 1876, and was given the baptismal names of Margaret Gertrude.
Her nearest approach to Oriental ancestry was a strain of Jewish blood
through her father’s descent. Adam Zelle was a prosperous business man,
but the mother, a good-looking woman of the typical Dutch type, came
from the better-class family of Van der Meulen. Margaret’s early life
seems to have been no more distinguished by incident than that of the
blond children who accompanied her to the Cammingha-State school, and
who scampered through a happy innocent childhood on the banks of a grey
canal. The girl whose dusky beauty was to enslave so many men in high
places can recall no incident of these commonplace days other than a
preference for one golden-haired little playmate. Doubtless it was the
good Vrouw Zelle’s intention to have her daughter educated in a superior
manner, more in keeping with the Van der Meulen pretensions, which urged
her to send Margaret to a school where the girl would be taught to
conduct herself becomingly. She was admitted to a Catholic convent at
the age of fourteen, precisely the time when, from her own romantic
tale, she was being rescued from the Kanda Swany. Thus, instead of being
torn from the grasp of fanatical devotees of an unknown mystic cult, she
was, in reality, entering the cloistered security of a religious house
where young ladies are protected with zealous care.
There she remained until she had reached the age of eighteen and went to
spend a vacation at The Hague, the Dutch capital. In this town, where
life flows with the turgid tranquillity of its own canal waters, the
romantic girl was noticed by a handsome officer whose elegance was
turning the heads of the simple Dutch maidens home from school. Captain
Campbell MacLeod was no longer a young man, but, said Margaret Gertrude,
enthusiastically, “His age renders him still more adorable.” Margaret
admitted later that she had always suffered from a weakness for
officers.
“Anyone who is not an officer,” she said to a group of these men, “does
not interest me. The officer is a being apart, a kind of artist
breathing the grand air in the brilliant profession of arms, in a
uniform that is always seductive. Yes, I have had a number of lovers,
but they were always good soldiers, brave, ready for battle, and while
waiting for it amiable and courteous. To me the officer is a separate
race. I have loved only the officer and have never been concerned to
know whether the man was German, Italian, or French.”
This quaint conceit might have been adopted to flatter the men to whom
it was addressed, but its spontaneity would have been sufficient proof
of its sincerity if her life had not substantiated her words. What gives
this statement a curious tinge of cynicism was the fact that the man who
married her in no way fits the standard she had adopted for her officer.
MacLeod was of good, even distinguished, Scottish descent and held a
commission in the Dutch Colonial Army. At twenty-one he was a vicious
young satyr; at forty he was a satiated libertine who continued to flout
all decency from acquired habit rather than from active desire. A
handsome man of dandified appearance who caressed a tender growth of
down on his lip with jewelled fingers, while he cast stealthy glances of
admiration upon the shapely young convent-bred girl enjoying her holiday
in a town that is not remarkable for its festal life. The inappeasable
sex-hunger of the unhappy man could be read in his eyes, and it was this
which called to the sensuous Margaret.
They were married and spent a joyous honeymoon among the sedate villas
of Wiesbaden, where those drinking the vile waters (or pretending to)
could, on occasion, inject no little gaiety into their cure. Walking in
the pleasant and orderly public gardens or taking her aperitive at the
Kurhaus she must have seen the resplendent type of creature whom she
idealized as the officer, the aloof, dignified, and powerful officers of
the garrison, so great a contrast to the man whom she had married. Who
knows what promising glances she gave the uniformed gods beneath the
sportive baskets of rosebuds which decorate the Hotel Rosenblume?
After an unsuccessful attempt at conjugal felicity in the house of
MacLeod’s sister, where Margaret proved once again that if man is not
made to live alone, women are not intended to live together, the newly
married couple took a house in the more modern part of Amsterdam. Here
their ill-fated son, Norman, was born shortly after their marriage. One
of the events which left an ineffaceable impression on the luxury-loving
bride dates from this same year. MacLeod had the privilege, as an army
officer, of presenting his wife at court. Possibly it was on this
occasion when she made her first bow before royalty that she conceived
the idea of having kings and princes pay her homage.
Indeed, she now begins to cultivate a new pride. It appears that her
husband was not as wealthy as he was supposed to be and his extravagant
habits led to trouble. Margaret felt that she was being neglected, and
in her loneliness found she was no more than a housekeeper for her gay
husband.
“My grandmother was the Baroness Winjbergen,” she reminds MacLeod when
she revolts against this treatment.
But worse is to come. The accomplished libertine whose name she bore
would not break off his acquired habits; he rarely was to be found at
home. He preferred the companionship of fair but frail ladies, of good
fellows with whom he could gamble with all he possessed and a little
more. In a short time he had reached a stage of threatened ruin from
which nothing but an act of repulsive dishonour saved him. The young
wife was instructed to employ her coy glances, her strange Oriental
beauty, and her nascent powers of fascination upon a certain wealthy man
whose indiscretions made him a suitable object for blackmail. Margaret
was not averse to making the attempt.
“But this man was a great admirer of my eyes,” she explains in recording
this interview in her _Life_, “and I was able to collect several
thousands of guilders without having to be unfaithful.”
The final qualification, if true, would not have been added, even as an
afterthought, a short while later.
After this incident there is a gap in Margaret’s life, until we find her
husband commanding a battalion of the Colonial Army Reserve in Java,
where he is living with his wife and two children. The second child, a
daughter called Jeanne Louise, had been born a short while before they
left Holland. But, by the time their track has been picked up in this
jungle clearing, their domestic relations are the scandal of the Dutch
colony.
“It was at Benjoe-Biroe that I got my first whipping,” Margaret says,
reminiscently.
Shortly after this Margaret began to bombard her father for assistance
to secure a legal separation, and the prosperous burgher laid a formal
complaint against the husband with the local authorities. At the same
time he admonished his daughter to control herself with patience and to
have a witness at the next whipping, as this would facilitate a divorce.
In this humid atmosphere the flowers of evil germinate quickly and burst
into abundant blossoms. Before long the half-demented officer was
threatening his wife with a loaded revolver.
“He was in love with another woman,” Margaret writes, “and was willing
to pay the price of murder for his liberty. He admitted it and warned me
that unless we were divorced very quickly he would kill me.”
This consummation of folly was rendered unnecessary by the termination
of MacLeod’s active service. When he was transferred to the reserve of
officers the ill-assorted pair returned to Amsterdam and a petition for
divorce was promptly instituted. But as if to show her desire for
originality the petitioner continued to live with her husband in his
sister’s home until his incessant drunken revelry led the good lady, or
her respectable lawyer husband, to eject them. The MacLeod _ménage_ then
sought a refuge in a modest dwelling which was not at all in keeping
with Margaret’s high ambitions. From here the husband went out one night
on the familiar pretext of mailing a letter and took their sick child
with him so that she might benefit from the air. He did not return. Or,
rather, he only returned when Margaret had recovered the custody of the
little Jeanne through the aid of the courts, pending a decision of her
petition for divorce. When MacLeod did return to the Van Breestrat home
he promptly installed a new mistress. He then proceeded to settle
accounts with Margaret in a manner characteristic of a man who fails to
give his wife any financial assistance. He caused a notice to be
inserted in the newspapers that he would no longer be responsible for
his wife’s debts.
This pious act of repudiation roused Margaret to a pitch of fury, for
she declared that it was instrumental in closing the doors of all her
friends, even that of her noble and virtuous aunt, Baroness Landes,
where she had found a temporary refuge. But Dutch doors are not so
puritanical that they close automatically upon those whose sole error is
to have contemplated divorce from a savage, drunken husband. Dutch
hospitality has a warmer reputation. Be that as it may, Margaret MacLeod
found herself on the street with a sick child, without clothes, and for
riches the sum of three and a half florins.
At this point we leave the old Margaret. Her apprenticeship among the
cherubim of hell now begins. The Red Dancer begins to take form among
the mists that blow in from the North Sea. It may be added, in passing,
that the Dutch courts, having refused her the divorce for which she
applied, granted it shortly after to her husband, to the profound
indignation of her posthumous admirers.
_Chapter Four_
The Paris début of Mata Hari had a ludicrous termination. Light upon
this stage of her life has been wanting, so that these few scant details
will be interesting since they are new. Finding all havens closed to her
in Amsterdam, Margaret decided to admit failure and returned to the
parental home in The Hague. But the prosperous and highly respected
burgher-father killed no fatted calf for the wanderer. Instead, he was
ready enough to provide the means of removing his daughter from the
neighbourhood. Furnished with the necessary funds, Margaret made for
Paris, determined to make her début as a dancer. But since she had no
professional training and had to find a means of livelihood until her
act was ready, she did what so many other young stage people do—she
posed as a model for painters.
“On the purple granite altar of the Kanda Swany....”
But between the coasts of Malabar and La Rotonde many waters flow.
Margaret was twenty-seven when she knocked one morning at a studio door
in the Montparnasse district.
“I am seeking employment as a model,” she explained to the artist.
“Very good,” he replied. “Let me see your figure.”
“Oh no! I want to pose only for the head,” was her horrified response.
“I am the widow of a colonel who died in the Indies and left me with two
sons. I am trying to educate them but have no resources.”
“In that case your beauty ought to secure you some sittings for the
head, but you will be paid much less than if you will pose for the full
figure, for, from what I can gather, you must have a pretty figure. At
any rate, I don’t insist.”
Margaret lamented the immolation of her modesty, the outrage to her
distinguished family, and, generally, made use of the familiar
arguments, but when the painter told her abruptly that she could do just
whatever she pleased she began to undress.
To this man and to other artists we owe the explosion of another portion
of the bubble of her legendary life. Artists who saw her have all borne
testimony to the beauty of Mata Hari’s figure, several declaring that
they had never seen such lovely shaped arms. But for the employment as a
model she had one grave defect—her bust was pendulous and ugly. During
her dances she never bared her breasts, although this was the only part
of her body which was covered. Invariably she wore a jewelled covering
for her bosom. The Red Dancer had her own explanation to offer for this
and it reflected more to the type of credit she coveted.
“My husband,” she used to say, “often threatened to disfigure me so that
no other man would desire me.”
She claimed that in one of his fits of erotic dementia the man had
attacked her in such a ferocious fashion that she was mutilated. “That
is why,” she would conclude the story, “I have not cared to exhibit my
complete torso.”
However, to return to her application for employment. The disappointment
of the artist that such a promising model was not satisfactory for his
purpose caused him to remark that, after all, she had better pose for
the head alone. Either she felt her modesty was outraged by this, or,
what is more likely, her vanity was shocked, but the innocent statement
produced what the French call a _crise de nerfs_, in which the artist
had to call for his wife’s assistance and, to soothe Margaret’s injured
modesty (or vanity), the painter did make use of her in a poster which
occupied him at the time. She was in the grimly appropriate character of
Messalina! Thus the poster of the Gaîté’s production of Isador de Lara’s
“Messalina” was posed by Mata Hari, and no one has yet commented on the
grim symbolism of the combination.
In 1903 she made her début as a dancer, less than a year after the
inhospitable doors of her virtuous relations had closed upon her. What
success she had or might have reaped from this initial appearance is
only a matter of speculation, because the outraged Scottish husband
clamoured for protection against anyone bearing the honoured name of his
puritanical ancestors consecrating herself to the art of the dance in
the modern Babylon. In the first flush of his outraged pride he wrote an
indignant letter to his wife, threatening to have her enclosed in a
convent if she did not conduct herself with more modesty and dignity.
This unexpected document afflicted Margaret with a mingling of tears,
fear, and revolt. She demanded telegraphic counsel of her relatives, and
as a result of their replies she voluntarily returned to Holland and
went into seclusion amid the austere rusticity of Nimegue, in order to
escape the mediæval vengeance of her irate husband. To the enthusiastic
admirers of Mata Hari this period of her life has been likened to the
Agony in the Garden. The crazy, muddled drug addicts whose celestial
system centres round the more obscure night haunts of Paris and extends
only to the other bank of the Seine, picture life in this little Dutch
town as refined torture for the soul that sought the unbounded liberty
of the stars, the unmeasured spaces of love, and the unplumbed depths of
Siva’s paradise. But they are a little in advance of time. The
constellation of the Three Goddesses was not yet reported to have
appeared in the firmament. None the less, Margaret hated the place.
“Am I to remain here for the rest of my days?” she wails in January of
1904. Truly one who has known the joys of Parisian life will understand
that the innocent festivities of Nimegue are a poor substitute. It was
doubtless the repression of this period which caused her to fly to the
other extreme when she escaped. In place of the glaring footlights which
she coveted was the pale reflection of the sun in the copper dishes on
the walls; the only audience were the curious housewives who peered from
behind discreetly drawn curtains as the woman of the dance-halls flitted
down the silent street; and for music, the joyous music her heart loved,
there was only the metallic clank of the municipal belfry when the
bell-ringers practised their ingenuous hobby. The grey little town which
dwells in the almost perpetual shadow of sea mists must have seemed as
remote from the delights of the City of Light as was Benjoe-Biroe in the
Javanese jungle.
“I shall triumph sooner or later,” she cries defiantly from the
enveloping fog.
And then one day she summons her courage and descends upon the gay Paris
like a thunderclap. Margaret Gertrude Zelle is no more, the curtain
rises definitely on the Red Dancer.
_Chapter Five_
Mata Hari established her reputation in Paris; she achieved the highest
flights of her fame in that city, and her other conquests, in Berlin,
Rome, Vienna, London, were but reflections of her Parisian success. Her
first efforts were in public, on the vaudeville stage, where she
speedily gained a sympathetic reception by the novelty of her dancing.
But it was not as a dancer that she coveted a reputation. Of one thing
about her dancing we may be certain: as an art such as Isadora Duncan
conceived it or as Loie Fuller imagined it, Mata Hari had no conception.
Dancing to her was nothing more than a means of attracting attention, of
displaying the splendour of her beauty, with the ultimate object of
captivating her lovers. Like many another artist who has imagined
herself greater than her art, Mata loved the adulation offered to a
popular favourite, but better than a large audience in a theatre she
loved the intimacy afforded by private engagements in some luxurious
apartment where, before a select audience of refined profligates, and
brilliant, wealthy, dilettantes she could explain with greater freedom
the sensuous rites of the fantastic cult to which she had promoted
herself the high-priestess.
Her ideal was to become a famous—the most famous—courtesan, and to
achieve it she invented her sacred origin and improvised an art. The
opportunity she sought was to exhibit her lovely amber body among gold
and precious stones, to pose rhythmically among sumptuous
transparencies. The rest was only decoration to conceal, justify, and
stimulate the underlying sensual debauch.
“When in my infancy I danced before rajahs on the shores of the sacred
Ganges....”
In point of fact, Mata Hari’s knowledge of the orgies practised in
Brahmanist temples and sanctuaries was derived exclusively from books.
The most she had ever seen were the dances of the tiny Javanese _bayas_
in those villages she had visited while her husband was with the Dutch
colonial forces. Between these diminutive little creatures (more like
automatic toys than flesh and blood) and the _apsaras_ of the Brahman
temples there is a huge gulf. One is the incarnation of some abstract
ancestral rite grown ghostly by its tenuous prolongation through the
ages; the other is the realization of a morbid drug-distorted vision of
bestiality, thinly veiled behind a religious significance.
There may have been moments when she took her charlatanry seriously, but
that Mata Hari’s dances had any religious meaning is the fantasy of
minds not less distorted than her own. As the shadows closed around her
in the prison of Saint-Lazare she gratefully accepted the ministrations
of two Catholic nuns, and on the morning of her execution actually
received the rite of baptism from the hands of an Anabaptist pastor. Two
days after her sentence she begged the prison doctor to obtain for her
some books to beguile the weary hours. Doubtful about her tastes, the
doctor begged for some guidance in the selection, suggesting the works
of such popular writers as Marcel Prévost, Bourget, and Rosny. She
rejected these suggestions with scorn.
“Stories about the middle classes never interested me,” she declared.
“To you I can confess that I have never been able to read through one of
those works which are called comedies of manners. What I do like is
poetry which has mystery, religion, legend, and magic. I firmly believe
that the only means of living in beauty consists in avoiding the
thousand and one daily annoyances which interfere with an existence in
the full ideal. That is why I cannot tolerate European things, not even
the religion.” At which declaration she shook an admonitory finger at
the doctor and continued, “Now do not go and tell that to the poor
religious who are trying so hard to convert me. Those unhappy people do
not understand what the word religion means on my lips and they would
certainly cross themselves piously if they knew that I mingled dances
and caresses in my liturgy.... For I am a Hindu, although born in
Holland. Hindu? Yes, certainly. You who are an intelligent man will say
that there must be something European in me. No, there is not. I am
absolutely Oriental.
“Further, the Orient alone interests me deeply. When one speaks of
motherlands my soul turns to a distant country where a golden pagoda is
mirrored in a winding stream. I do not know exactly what I am or where I
am from. From Benares, from Golconda, from Gwalior, from Madura, what
does it matter? There is a secret in my origin, in my blood. It will be
known sometime later, but, for my own part, I have barely penetrated the
fringe of the secret.”
The doctor said that at this point of the invocation of her illusory
cradle a look of great sadness came over her eyes. This man, who knew
little of her imaginary birth and life, declares that he was baffled by
the complexity of her nature. He maintains that she possessed nothing of
the nature, type, character, culture, mind, or appearance of the women
of Europe; there was something of the primitive savage and at the same
time something sacerdotal and refined about her. Concerning the fuller
development of her studies she continued:
“Formerly, my favourite reading was that which informed me how to love
life and savour voluptuous delights with a passionate, Sybaritical
enjoyment. In the _Prem Sagar_ there are chapters which make the senses
reel as though one was intoxicated with sensuous drugs. And the works of
Kalidasa and his disciples, with their tenderness and picturesque
subtlety, have furnished me with entire days of ecstasy. I smile when I
hear people say that scenic art reaches its apogee in Paris. Yonder, in
India, each passion has its perfume and colour. Thus, love is blue,
pleasure white, tenderness rose, and heroism red. As a new sentiment is
about to dominate a drama the decoration changes tints and the
atmosphere changes its aroma.... The lovers really love, actually engage
in the love embrace on the stage in full view of the audience. They hate
just as truly. The pursuit and attack is real. I have seen blood on the
hands of some of the actors. Ah, those legends of chivalry! those
stories of Rajput warriors who, with a saffron tunic over their coat of
mail, went forth seeking marvellous adventures.... And the romances of
proud Brahmanist daughters enamoured of their pages, imprisoned in a
citadel for years because of their love, without renouncing the hope of
escape which would enable them to flee some day and join the faithful
lovers who awaited them at the door of the pagoda.
“Nothing is more poetic, nobler, or greater than what remains to us of
ancient India.”
Instead of the _Imitation of Christ_, which appears to be the favoured
study of condemned prisoners, Mata Hari chose the _Lotus of Faith_, a
Buddhist book of instruction which teaches a contempt for everything in
life. Even under the shadow of the broad wings of hovering death this
extraordinary woman could command her imagination to furnish the
ecstasies she had formerly been able to realize through the flesh. It is
needless to say that in these confidences her recollections were mere
flights of fancy and not efforts of memory. That artistic touch of the
actors with blood-reeking hands was sheer imagination—the poetic licence
of the story-teller, like so much else in her autobiography. For Mata
Hari’s heart found sustenance in two things—imagination and love of the
carnal kind.
So much, then, for her religion—it was art and love. Yet, to those who
suffered from her deception, she insisted upon the religious
significance of her art. To one admirer she wrote: “As you know, every
true temple dance (not those of the street and the public places) is a
theological treatise and should explain in pose and gesture the rules of
the Vedas, the sacred books.”