Chapter I: Part 1

MATA HARI
_Courtesan and Spy_

By
MAJOR THOMAS COULSON, O.B.E.

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.”

Since these sacred books contain the most complete description of the 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....”