Mata Hari: Courtesan And Spy

Preface

HE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF MATA HaArI

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 revii vill Preface

mainder 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

Preface ix 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 x Preface 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-Elysées 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

Preface x1 Red Dancer and her partner, Death, and the in- _ jury she did was tragic enough without adding to it by exposing people who, through accident or indiscretion, became involved.

ac, eNMata Hari

Chapter One

HE 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 watchful- I

2 Mata Hari: ness 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 noticeboard 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

4 Mata Hari: 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

Courtesan and Spy 5 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

Courtesan and Spy Fh 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

HIS IS THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL. WHAT OF

its obverse? The story of the spy Hai 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 8

Courtesan and Spy 9 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 bayadére 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

10 Mata Hari: the Duchess of Eckmuthl. 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.

“T 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 bayadére * 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

1'The bayadéres 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.

Courtesan and Spy II 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 bayadéres, 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 eprine. 662...”

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.

“Tt 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

Courtesan and Spy 13 curving, undulating bodies of the dainty little bayadéres, as clammily chill and as naked as the serpents. The remainder of this festivity is indescribable; it eclipses the bacchanalian fétes 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 rdle 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

14 Mata Hari 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 N THE PURPLE GRANITE ALTAR OF THE KANDA

SWANY, at the age of thirteen I was initi-

ated. . . . 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 Hz21 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 trans- 15 lation: “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 naive 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

Courtesan and Spy sir, 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.

’ she said to a

“Anyone who is not an officer,’ 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

20 Mata Hari: 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,” agaist this treatment.

she reminds MacLeod when she revolts

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.