joys of sensual love, of the arts to be practised by the courtesan who
desires to become successful, and the captivating graces to be employed
in retaining the affections of a lover, they were appropriately chosen
to form the basis of her art. That they were religious treatises was an
accident. Not only in her public appearances, but in the intimacy of her
boudoir she tried to invoke the vision of the divine Brahma in the
halflights of an ancient sanctuary; of mysterious flowers, exotic,
luscious, stupefying; of the undulating coils of the writhing serpent
interlaced with rich foliage. The beautiful amber-tinted body glides
with infinite grace among the illusive disorder of diaphanous, floating
veils, and the intoxication of subtly penetrating perfumes.
For her “Sacred Flower Dance,” a favourite with her, based upon the
legend of the goddess with the power of embodying herself within the
petals of a flower, she writes in several letters to one of her
associates, ordering the musical accompaniment just as a banker’s wife
orders a gown for a special occasion.
The music of “The Flowing Waters” will serve as an overture to convey
the impression that the temple is in a forest with a murmuring cascade
within hearing. A prince comes to plead before the goddess, seated
like a bronze statue on her altar. He enters the temple bearing
exquisite orchids, the incarnation of the divinity, whose place on the
altar has been taken for this rite by a priestess. As the prince makes
intercession to the goddess before her altar he burns the blossoms in
sacrifice. To him the priestess makes this terrible prediction: “You
will die as everything must die. Make your life a succession of
delicious and glorious moments. Better that you pass on this earth
through moments of intense sensation and then depart, than drag your
body through an old age that is without beauty and satisfaction.”
As the ecstatic fumes from the burning flowers intoxicate the prince,
the priestess (which shall be me) rises and dances, explaining in pose
and gesture the rules of the Veda, the holy books of the Brahma. The
music must express the pose of the incarnation, the apparition of the
flower, its unfolding into blossom, the closing of its petals, all
typifying the powers of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—that is to say,
creation, fruitfulness, decay. The whole fades into obscurity; prince,
goddess, and high-priestess disappear.
This, then, is the rôle she has chosen. She adds a point of exclamation
in one of her letters in which she says that Siva is the god of sin; he
“must have a power of destruction which equals, if it does not surpass,
the good of Brahma.” Siva was her favourite god; she became the symbol
of his cult and she recruited many worshippers.
No such weird fantasy could ever have become an accepted doctrine if
preached from the stage of a vaudeville theatre, and well Mata Hari knew
it. In the sepulchral solitude of Nimegue the idea was developed until
in 1905, when she returned to Paris, Mata Hari did not seek engagements
immediately on the stage. Her campaign was more subtle once the
opportunity had suggested itself, and the suggestion came from a most
unexpected source. She proposed to give a performance of Javanese dances
in the Guimet Museum, which is devoted to the collection of Oriental
curiosities. Here, beneath the enigmatic smile of a great golden Buddha,
she danced in the discreet costume of saffron-coloured veils before a
specially invited audience, never suspecting the possibilities of the
display until a grave and learned scholar gave her the clue. All
Orientalists are distinguished for their gravity. A bearded scholar of
Eastern lore rose and explained to the awed audience the meaning of the
rhythmic ceremony they were about to witness. Having completed his
discourse, Mata Hari was called on to appear in her saffron veilings
and, with her face glowing from the excitement of the scholar’s
suggestions, she danced her “Black Pearl” dance.
Needless to say that at this stage of her career (1905–06) Mata Hari was
almost wholly ignorant of the Brahman religion and its ceremonial
dances. All she proposed to do was to give a romantic version of the
stiff and mechanical movements of the little Javanese dancers. But the
grave old Oriental scholar had put an idea into her receptive brain and
she nourished it with care. Next morning the Paris newspapers were
filled with the novelty of this extraordinary performance in a museum of
serious studies, and she decided to reap the full benefit of her sudden
fame.
“On the purple granite altar of the Kanda Swany I danced for the first
time....”
In reality, then, the first step on the ladder was not on the coasts of
Malabar, but on the Paris boulevards. From the museum of Oriental art to
the _salon_ of the Chilean minister was the next step, but this was not
a resting-place; it was no more than a breathing space on the rapid rise
to ascendency. Besides, she had not yet reached the stage of complete
nudity which she was to favour. That only came when the Princess Murat
invited her to perform before an exclusive assembly in her city palace.
Later the Prince del Drago placed her on the topmost pinnacle of
notoriety when he gave a celebration which was designed to revolve
around the central figure of a _bayadère_—Mata Hari. It was these
evenings among the socially elect which gave her most delight, not the
public performances at the Olympia or in the chill scholastic atmosphere
of the Guimet Museum. Besides, they were infinitely more profitable in
the outcome. High though her earnings as a dancer were, much more money
was required to indulge her extravagant tastes and the indiscriminate
charity which she dispensed. The effect of these displays can best be
understood with the aid of a spectator’s recollections.
“You can scarcely credit the mystic frenzy produced by her lascivious
attitudes,” he said. “Her nervous tremors, her violent contortions, were
terribly impressive. There was in the performance something of the
solemnity of an idol, something of the loathsome horror of a writhing
reptile. From her great sombre eyes, half closed in sensuous ecstasy,
there gleamed an uncanny light, like phosphorescent flames. She seemed
to embrace an invisible being in her long shapely arms. Her braceleted
legs were glossy and well moulded, they so quivered through excessive
effort that it seemed the tendons must burst through the enveloping
skin. To witness the spectacle was to receive the impression that one
had actually been present at the metamorphosis of a serpent taking a
woman’s form.”
A serpent, always a serpent!
_Chapter Six_
But she prospered exceedingly. From 1905, when she first developed the
idea of becoming a civilized _bayadère_, her love affairs followed her
like an unending procession. From her admirers she received such
substantial homage that before long she was established in a sumptuous
apartment near the Champs-Élysées, she had her private carriage and a
collar of pearls. This may not exactly be the apogee of her existence
(that was reserved for her German career), but it certainly represents
the highest peak of her artistic life. A man who knew her well without
having succumbed to her fatal charm, but who had many opportunities of
studying her at this time, gives a description of Mata Hari which denies
her claim to beauty.
“She was not,” he maintained, “really pretty. Her features lacked
refinement. There was something bestial about the lips, cheeks, and jaw.
Her brown skin always had the appearance of having been anointed with
oil or was exuding perspiration. Her bust was flat and drooping and
always concealed from view. Only her eyes and arms were absolute in
their beauty. Those who said she had the most beautiful arms in the
world did not exaggerate. And her eyes! Eyes that were magnetic and
enigmatic, ever changing, yet ever of velvety softness, commanding and
pleading, melancholy and mean, those terrible eyes in whose depths so
many souls were drowned, actually merited the adoration awarded them.”
Paul Namur painted two portraits of her at this time, one in street
costume, which seems to have disappeared, and the other a dance pose in
the nude which shows her wearing an Indian diadem and a collar of
emeralds and topaz. Mata made several sittings for them, and the artist
had the opportunity to exercise his trained observation on her. His
recollections are interesting.
“The most striking thing about her,” he says, “was the astonishing fact
that this spoiled darling, upon whom destiny had showered gifts, grace,
talent, fame, rarely lost the expression of inmost sadness. Frequently
she would recline in an armchair, dreaming of secret things for perhaps
an hour. I cannot recall that I ever saw Mata Hari smile.”
Another time he said:
“She was as superstitious as a Hindu. Once, while disrobing, a jade
bracelet slipped from her wrist. She turned quite pale and cried:
“‘That will bring me bad luck. You will see. It is a presentiment of
misfortune. Keep it, that horrid bracelet. I never want to see it
again.’”
The Paris of her day was the most fertile ground for cultivating love as
a subtle and very complicated science. She never practised the simpler
arts of coquetry so familiar to the chic _Parisienne_, and it was this
original development as a science rather than as an art which carried
her to the position from which she could exercise such a malign
influence when Paris became an entrenched camp. Unfortunately, Paris,
which is the pleasure ground of the entire world as well as the capital
of France, is as capricious in its loves as are most other things where
pleasure is the main motive. There is nothing so completely satiating as
the same delight repeated without variation. Mata’s position began to
slip. She had imitators who roused her fury because she felt they were
stealing her thunder. After a short disappearance from the stage to
devote herself exclusively to a new and exigent adorer she writes to a
friend:
I want to begin work afresh, to expose myself to all the cares to
which glory (!) exposes us, but I want to have the credit for what I
do. I no longer want to see others working on my ideas.
This becomes the theme of several of her existing letters. And then,
there was a waning popularity when she appeared in public. The
inevitable was taking place. Art was the chosen expression for
advertising her ministry at the altar of love; she desired to have the
reputation of an Isadora Duncan without that artist’s varied and
extensive repertoire, her talent, and her broader conception of art.
Isadora Duncan was primarily an artist living for her art, sacrificing
herself to its demands. Mata Hari was first of all a courtesan; if she
appealed to art it was only as a subterfuge. There were fits of
unbridled rage when she was denied this right to which she pretended.
The capricious Parisians began to tire of her public appearances, and
with the decrease in their adulation she felt her position slipping from
her. The press which had greeted her favourably grew lukewarm, and then
chilling. The Paris audiences refused to regard her as anything but what
she pretended to be, an artist, and Mata Hari had her moments of pride.
She would be content with nothing but the position of a goddess whose
character she was always ready to assume. She did not wish to be
everything to any one man, but to be all things to all men.
This excessive vanity was her downfall. Casting about for a locale where
her artistic pretensions would be taken at their proper value and her
true character recognized, she thought of her former reception in
Berlin. What the French gave so niggardly would be yielded generously by
the Germans, who adored her. Therefore, she accepted another engagement
in Berlin in 1907.
“There are times when I almost believe in the caprices of fate,” she
once wrote to an admirer. “But a moment’s thought convinces me that
destiny is what we make it.”
If this is true, then it was in Berlin that Mata Hari shaped the destiny
which conducted her to the rifle-range at Vincennes. Of her residence in
Berlin little is known, partly because the German secret service (or
that of any other nation) does not seek publicity for the work of its
agents, and partly because association with men of very high social
standing ensured a conspiracy of silence on her actions. We know very
little of her life other than that she was speedily welcomed by the male
aristocracy of the nation. She accompanied the Crown Prince to the army
manœuvres in Silesia, appeared in Berlin night life as the companion of
the young Duke of Brunswick, had other admirers of less exalted station,
and, consciously or unconsciously, became a spy.
It is not possible to understand how a woman like Mata Hari could become
a spy without having an elementary knowledge of the methods adopted by
the German secret police in recruiting their agents, and without knowing
why other women were persuaded to accept this highly dangerous
employment. It is the practice of most countries to avoid using a woman
for this work if a man is available; in England it is an almost
invariable rule never to employ women, and the English have good reasons
for their action. Of the most conspicuous spies of recent years who have
paid the penalty for their labors, women like Marguerite Francillard,
“Eva,” the old ogre Tichelly, Yvonne Schadeck, and Anne Garnier, all of
them with the one exception of Tichelly (who had a warped sense of
morality in general) were dragged into the business because they had
fallen in love with men who were already in the secret service.
Coudoyannis, the Greek, a very active and highly paid spy, found that a
little friend was essential in his character as a man about town, but no
sooner had he secured one than his chief writes to offer him the
alternative of dismissing her or of luring her into the service. The
idea of making use of their mistresses was part of the doctrine taught
by certain instructors. Indeed, it is known that the notorious Frau
Henrichsen (known to the French also as “Mlle. Doktor”), who was head of
the Antwerp branch of the organization, was recruited in exactly the
same way from the Berlin _demi-monde_. Marussia Destrelles, Mata Hari’s
friend, certainly was enrolled by that means.
There is no more perplexing problem in Mata Hari’s life than this: why
should she become a spy? There can be little doubt that it was not for
love of money, for, contrary to popular belief, a spy’s salary is
miserably inadequate to the potential danger incurred. Of the actual
payment to spies we have abundant evidence. Even during the war it was
no more than a mere pittance, certainly not enough to tempt anyone who
had other resources. Captain Estève, recruited in Barcelona, was
furnished with 300 francs (about $60) in addition to his railway fare
and sent to seek information in France. Sydnet, who toured an American
vaudeville circuit as a gymnast, received 500 pesetas (about $100) to
blow up Les Invalides! Spies in England occasionally received as much as
$2,000 at a time, but this was considered high remuneration and had to
satisfy them for some time. Such wretched payment, then, could be no
temptation to Mata Hari, who could earn much more in the safety of
vaudeville contracts and who had no lack of enthusiastic admirers ready
and willing to compete for her favours and to provide her with every
conceivable luxury. Her extravagance was colossal; she was accustomed to
throw money out of the window, as the French say, and the only time she
is known to have demanded money from German official sources was when
she was stranded in Madrid.
Major Massard, of the French staff, was of opinion that pride had caused
Mata Hari to accept this dangerous employment. True, she loved to assert
her power over men of influence, and we shall presently see that she had
many opportunities to exercise this power over men in very high places.
A high official in Spain who knew her well, and is among her stoutest
defenders, thinks vanity could have seduced her if anything could have
done so. She never was proof against her own vanity—happy the woman who
is, and rare. Still another, and this man speaks with authority, since
he watched her closely through several years as a counter-espionage
agent, told the writer:
“She was probably inspired by a woman’s natural instinct to play with
fire, a form of amusement which will endure so long as women are denied
the means of letting off steam which men enjoy.” Then elaborating this
opinion he went on: “Look at her life! It is one debauch after another
and one debauch is much the same as another. There is nothing so
completely satiating as a surfeit of unvarying pleasure, and the more
intense it is the more quickly is satiety reached. All it does is to
create a lust for fresh sensations, and once the palate has ceased to
savour the delight of one form of pleasure, another must be found which
will stimulate the jaded appetite. It requires a violent stimulant to
gratify anyone who has drunk to the dregs from the cup of physical
passion. Mata Hari found consolation in the thrills of dangerous
intrigue when she began to lose interest in the older and more familiar
pleasures. That is all.”
Some or all of these emotions—love of power, the lust of an insatiable
vanity, the quest of new physical thrills—might have had their part in
impelling Mata Hari to undertake the work, but the simple truth is that
she was a spy before she knew it, and, once begun, it was impossible to
withdraw. In accepting employment with Abteilung III, the German
intelligence service, a spy had the most exacting task-master, for once
the agent became restive or his reports ceased to be useful from
inaccuracy or inadequacy, the disciplinary action was severe and
inevitable.
The usual method was to send the delinquent some message in an
indiscreet manner, so that it would fall into the enemy’s hands and so
expose his activities to the authorities of the nation against whom he
was working or against whom he refused to work. There are many known
examples of this hateful practice; one, that of the beautiful Marussia
Destrelles, a friend of Mata Hari’s, we shall give at some length in its
proper place. A betterknown instance is that of Karl Graves, since it
led to some discussion in the British House of Commons, although the
replies then given to anxious patriots may not be taken too seriously,
as will presently be seen.
Dr. Karl Graves had performed some prodigies of secret-service work for
the authorities of the Wilhelmstrasse. His most sensational feat in this
direction was at Port Arthur, where he secured the information of
Japanese movements which would have been of incalculable value to the
Russian authorities had he not sent it directly to Berlin. He was also
active in the Balkans during the first Balkan War. But for some reason
the officials of Abteilung III became displeased with him and he was
sent to England (or Scotland, to be exact), where an undisguised
communication of a confidential nature addressed to him through the mail
led to his arrest. It was frank betrayal and the English authorities
knew it. So did Graves. Nevertheless, he was tried and sentenced to a
sharp term of imprisonment. To those sensitive moralists who desire to
know that retribution always overtakes the sinner it may be interesting
to say that Karl Graves never served this sentence. The British
Intelligence secured the release of this highly embittered man and
provided him with employment—as a spy against his former employers! The
British had extraordinary success in utilizing former enemy agents of
outstanding merit in this way.
It has been asserted by some of her admirers that Mata Hari only
succumbed to a sudden temptation to undertake spying during the
excitement of the war, when her employment as a vaudeville artist was
restricted, but this can easily be disproved. To begin with, the system
of numbering spies betrayed her pre-war enrollment. No spy is known,
even to the higher officials, by name. They are invariably addressed and
known by a number. Mata Hari was H21. The enlargement of the service
during the war made necessary an alteration in the system of numbering,
so that the headquarters of the spy and the nation against whom he was
operating would be easily recognized by those who had to collate
reports. Spies recruited during the war received a symbol composed of
two letters and a number. The first letter was the initial of the town
where their headquarters was situated, and the second letter was the
initial of the name of the country in which they worked. Had Mata Hari
been enrolled during the war she would have received the symbol AF,
followed by a number, representing the initials of the words Antwerp and
France (Andversen and Frankreich in German).
The second piece of material evidence of her earlier employment as a spy
is the simple fact that the British authorities were well aware of her
activities long before the outbreak of war. In fact, the French did not
“discover” her. They only began to take her under surveillance when she
was signalled to them by the British service. So well was she watched by
the men from London that Mata Hari was under no illusion about their
recognition of her labours. No sooner did she betray any interest in an
English officer than he was warned of his danger or was transferred
quickly to some spot remote from her wiles and baleful influence.
Before proceeding to describe how Mata Hari became entangled in the
toils of secret intrigues let us pause in her story long enough to see
how the German authorities secured their recruits in times of peace.
Mention has been made of a Greek, Constantine Coudoyannis, who was known
in the London and Paris _demi-monde_ as Count Costa de Smyrnos. Before
his self-elevation to the nobility Count Costa was a pedlar who tramped
through France, Belgium, and Germany as far as the Prussian capital.
When the Count reviewed his past he surveyed as fine a standing crop of
wild oats as the limited means of a pedlar would permit him to
cultivate. Visiting the Prussian capital, he decided to take a day off
from peddling in order to view the _haut-monde_, and was enjoying a
casual stroll down the Unter den Linden when, in his own parlance, he
was “pinched” by the police for some inexplicable reason. His elastic
conscience was under no strain, for his last delinquency could not have
attracted the attention of the awe-inspiring police of the capital. To
the pedlar’s amazement he was not conducted to a police station, but to
an imposing apartment in the official quarter. There, to his
consternation, he was confronted with a very minute account of his petty
larcenies and rascalities committed in various other countries.
The dignified police official who interviewed him on the subject was a
worthy man who was roused to a pitch of fury by the mere recital of
these misdemeanours; he stormed and thundered at the terrified pedlar in
the name of outraged law and order, informing him that the French and
Belgian authorities (this was before the war) demanded his extradition
in order to provide condign punishment for his long list of misdeeds.
Having succeeded in reducing the pedlar to a state of terror at the
prospect of spending his near future in a foreign prison, the burly
uniformed officer began to coo as mildly as a dove. He informed the
scared pedlar that the might of the German Empire might be enlisted to
aid an accomplished linguist in return for certain services to be
rendered at the expense of the two countries which sought to punish him.
He was to become a German secret agent: the pedlar’s pack was to be
abandoned and Constantine would become a man of means and leisure. The
unhappy Greek left that house on the highroad to a self-chosen patent of
nobility and, later, a firing-squad. As a pedlar he was gifted. He spoke
several languages fluently and had a spy’s sacred respect for papers
that were absolutely correct, in order that embarrassing questions might
be avoided. It was his affection for papers of identity which had
enabled the German police to track him over half of Europe, through most
of his life’s history, and to concoct the story against him which
induced the terrified man to undertake work that eventually led to his
death.