Early Life (1876-1904)
During her career, Mata Hari told many lies about herself and her ancestry, and others were spread after her death. She claimed that she had been born in India, and she was also said to be Javanese, Eurasian, or even Jewish. In Javanese (Indonesian), “Mata Hari” means “eye of the day”. “Mata Hari” is also one of the many names of Parvati, a Hindu goddess and consort of Shiva, the god of creation, destruction, and dance. In fact, Margaretha Zelle had no Asian blood at all.
She was born in Leeuwarden the capital of the Dutch province of Friesland. Her father, Adam Zelle, was a prosperous hatter of German descent. Her mother, Antje Van Der Meulen, came from a well-off Frisian family. There was reportedly some Woudker blood in Mata Hari’s ancestry, the Woudkers being a gypsy-like local minority with dark complexions.
Mata Hari’s early childhood was happy and she soon gave evidence of the strong personality and talent for self-dramatization that were to remain with her as an adult. In 1889, however, her father went bankrupt and the family split up. Margaretha’s mother died in 1891. The young Margaretha went to a teachers’ college in Leiden where she trained as a kindergarten teacher, but there were whispers that she had conducted an affair with the headmaster. In 1894, Margaretha was living with an uncle and was still without a job or a stable home life. She answered a personal ad that had been placed by Rudolph MacLeod, a Dutch Army officer of Scottish descent. The two married in 1895, after only a brief acquaintanceship. Soon after their marriage the couple sailed to Indonesia, where MacLeod’s unit was stationed.
The MacLeods soon had two children: Norman, born in 1897, and Jeanne (called Non), born in 1898. The marriage, however, was unhappy. MacLeod was twice Margaretha’s age, a rough soldier who drank hard and slept with prostitutes. According to Pat Shipman, Mata Hari’s most recent biographer, MacLeod may have suffered from syphilis, and may also have passed the disease on to his wife and children. The young, romantic, and elegant Margaretha attracted the attention of many men in Indonesia. There is no solid evidence that she was ever unfaithful, but MacLeod was still highly suspicious of his young wife. He complained often of Margaretha’s expensive taste in clothes, and probably beat and even whipped her when he was drunk. The couple’s son Norman was allegedly poisoned by a native servant in 1899, and his death effectively ended any affection that remained between husband and wife. In 1902, the MacLeods returned to Holland and were soon separated.
The Exotic Dancer and Prostitute (1904-1914)
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Margaretha soon drifted to Paris, the city of her dreams, but she was unable to find steady work and lived a precarious existence as a prostitute and artist’s model. Despite her sensuous nature, Margaretha was initially very reluctant to take off her clothes for artists, which of course limited her usefulness as a model. She got some help in these early Parisian years from Henri de Marguerie, a French consular offical whom she had met in Holland. She finally got a good job as an equestrienne in a Parisian circus. The owner of the circus suggested that she try dancing. Margaretha knew something of Indonesian dance and had often worn Indonesian dress when she lived in that country. In her original act, Margaretha performed three dances in Oriental costume: the “passion flower dance”; the “kris dance” (in which she wielded a spear or a long Malay dagger); and the “veil dance”, the most famous and successful of all. In this, Margaretha danced before a statue of Shiva, shedding her clothes until at the end of the performance she was completely naked save for a jeweled brassiere. (On some occasions, however, Margaretha wore an ultrathin see-through body stocking.)
Billing herself as Madame MacLeod, Margaretha gave her first private performances late in 1904. During this period she met Émile Étienne Guimet, a wealthy art collector and amateur Orientalist who had turned his home into a museum for Asian antiquties. Guimet served as an adviser to Margaretha, and helped improve her act. Guimet gave her expensive Asian costumes from his private collection, and apparently suggested her new stage name: Mata Hari. Margaretha’s public debut as Mata Hari came on 13 March 1905 at the Musee Guimet. The audience of 300 included the German and Japanese ambassadors. Mata Hari’s performance was a triumph, making her an overnight sensation with the public and the critics alike. For several years afterwards Mata Hari was a top star in Paris, performing at such choice venues as the Trocadero, the Cercle Royale, and the Olympia. Later in her career, Mata Hari also performed at the famed Folies Bergere. She also made several successful foreign tours, dancing in Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, and Monte Carlo. Mata Hari was much in demand for private performances, dancing in the homes of the rich and in leading Paris salons. At her peak, Mata Hari could command fees of up to 10,000 francs for an engagement. She was so popular that her name was used on brands of cigars, cigarettes, and other products.
Mata Hari always maintained that her dances were authentically Asian and had religious significance, just as she also claimed to be Indian or Indonesian herself. Ignorance of Asian dance was so widespread at the time that few challenged her claims. Though taken seriously both by critics and a few anthropologists, Mata Hari’s dances were in fact a pastiche of her own invention. Her success was largely due to the contemporary fascinations with exotic eroticism and all things Oriental. Since the 1890’s European writers and composers had been fascinated by the figure of Salome. Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play began the “Salomania” craze, and in 1905 (the very year of Mata Hari’s public debut) Richard Strauss wrote his hit opera on the same theme. Dangerous, highly-sexed Asian women were in demand by the public. The strip-tease had been known in France since at least the 1890’s. It was hardly fashionable or respectable, but semi-nude dancing was a feature of the developing modern dance movement. Isadora Duncan had already shown the way, but she had not been a great popular success in France and had not dared to take all her clothes off. Mata Hari chose the right place at the right time, not only artistically but legally. In 1902, the French courts struck down previous restrictions on nudity, both on the legitimate stage and in print media. Ordinary strippers might still get into legal trouble, but Mata Hari’s “artistic” and “religious” dances were within the law. By 1905 nude postcards were being widely sold in France, and nude images of Mata Hari became highly popular.
Contemporary critics identified Mata Hari with the modern dance movement; some thought her superior to Isadora Duncan. Without a filmed record, her true ability is difficult to assess. Her performances were certainly exciting, and she was a master at subtle changes of mood and expression. Mata Hari enjoyed performing and smiled frequently during her dances. At the end of the ‘veil dance,’ she fell prone to the floor and simulated orgasm. Mata Hari first did this in 1904, years before the dancer Nijinsky of the Russian Ballet created a major artistic sensation by doing the same thing in his performance of “The Afternoon of a Faun”.
Sometimes Mata Hari claimed to be a great artist and poured scorn on her “inauthentic” imitators. On other occasions, she said cynically that no one would have come to see her dance at all if she had not taken her clothes off. Her agent, Gabriel Astruc, represented the Russian Ballet and other major talents of the day, and Mata Hari later tried very hard to raise her own artistic level. Late in her career, she worked with the Indian musician and Muslim mystic Inayat Khan to create a truly authentic Indian dance. Mata Hari longed to dance the role of Salome, and in 1912 she finally did so. She gave a private performance of the part for the Prince di San Faustino, an aging womanizer, at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. This performance received excellent reviews, but did not lead to a public engagement. None of Mata Hari’s later ventures brought her the same popular success as her early nude dances.
Mata Hari’s newfound stardom came at a personal cost. Her bankrupt father wrote an exploitative book about her. Mata Hari had been separated from her husband for several years, but her nude appearances on stage gave Rudolph MacLeod grounds for divorce. MacLeod got custody of the couple’s daughter, Non, and this was a heavy blow to Mata Hari. MacLeod would not allow Mata Hari to send letters or gifts to Non, much less to see her. Mata Hari allegedly paid her maid to kidnap the girl, but the attempt failed. Despite her father’s hostility, Non remained loyal to her mother’s memory and carried a picture of Mata Hari in her lunchbox.
Despite her early success, Mata Hari did not pursue her dancing career consistently. From 1908 to 1912, she lived mainly off of men. Mata Hari became one of the most sought-after prostitutes in Paris, and had numerous clients and lovers. She had a special fondness for military officers, and also preferred wealthy and powerful men: diplomats, bankers, and lawyers. Among Mata Hari’s certain or probable lovers were the composers Jules Massenet, Giacomo Puccini, Baron Henri de Rothschild, Gaston Menier, a chocolate magnate, art collector, and enthusiastic amateur photographer who shot Mata Hari in the nude; Edouard Clunet, a leading expert on international law; General Adolphe-Pierre Messimy, French minister of war in 1914; Henri de Marguerie, French ambassador to Holland and Japan; and Jules Cambon, French ambassador to the United States, Spain, and Germany.
Mata Hari was certainly hard for men to resist. A German policeman who investigated Mata Hari on a charge of “indecency” eventually took her to dinner and slept with her. Jules Massenet admired her enough to write a dancing part for her in his 1906 opera, “Le Roi de Lahore”. Felix Xavier Rousseau, a successful banker and a married man, was another of Mata Hari’s lovers and her chief patron for several years. Rousseau bought Mata Hari an expensive villa in the fashionable Parisian suburb of Neuilly (nearly bankrupting himself in the process) and he also allowed her to use his chateau in the country, where she rode frequently. For a number of years, Mata Hari also had an on-and-off affair with a wealthy German cavalry officer named Alfred Kiepert. Under pressure from his family to end the relationship, Kiepert finally paid Mata Hari off with the enormous sum of 300,000 marks. Kiepert also took Mata Hari to see the German Army manuevers in Silesia. Mata Hari spent a good deal of time in Germany and later claimed that the Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany also had an affair with her, but there is little evidence for this. Such German associations, however, were later to prove dangerous for Mata Hari.
Although frequently absent from the stage in these years, Mata Hari remained a prominent figure in the social and artistic world of Belle Epoque Paris, and many famous persons knew her well (a fact they would later deny). Mata Hari was an excellent rider and doted on her horses, of whom she had several. She often attended fashionable horse races at Auteuil, Longchamps, and elsewhere. She ate at the best Parisian restaurants (Maxim’s, Rumpelmeyer’s, and the Larue) and stayed in the city’s finest hotels (including the Grand and the Meurice). In her prime years as a prostitute, Mata Hari rented rooms for her business in the Rue de Galilee, one of the most fashionable brothel quarters in Paris.
Clothes had always been one of Mata Hari’s passions, and she spent a great deal of money on them after she became famous. Erte, the brilliant designer who later worked for the Russian Ballet, designed his first theatrical costume for Mata Hari. Mata Hari’s other “couturieres” included Georgette Brama, Louise Emery, and Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, better known in France as Lucille. They knew Mata Hari as a demanding customer who preferred her dresses to be as revealing as possible. Though she spent much of her time at home in the nude (even receiving some visitors unclothed), Mata Hari was acknowledged by many to be the best-dressed woman in Paris. She was photographed by Paul Boyer, Lucien Walery, and Leopold-Emile Reutlinger, the leading theatrical and fashion photographers of the day.
During this period, Mata Hari tried repeatedly to enter the world of legitimate dance, opera, and theatre. In 1910, she performed a dancing role in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Antar”. In 1912, she performed in Gluck’s opera “Armide” and Antonio Marceno’s ballet “Bacchus and Gambrinus” at the prestigious La Scala in Milan. Unfortunately, Mata Hari seems to have won a reputation as a “difficult” performer who often quarrelled with directors, managers, and other artists. Her attempt to join Sergei Diaghilev’s famous Russian Ballet ended in disaster. Diaghilev and his assistants insisted that Mata Hari audition for them in the nude. Mata Hari found this condition insulting but submitted to it, only to be humiliatingly rejected.
Mata Hari’s career was not entirely unique. Other women had followed a similar path in France. The stage was not completely respectable for a woman before 1914, and some women who became famous as singers, dancers, actresses, models, or prostitutes moved easily from one of these professions to the other, sometimes practising several at a time. The most successful and desirable of these “Demimondaines” became true courtesans or “Grandes Horizontales”, well above the level of the ordinary streetwalker. They had their pick of wealthy and powerful lovers, sometimes wielded political influence, and often married well and became respectable hostesses, presiding over their own salons. The dancer La Belle Otero and the actress Liane de Pougy, both near-contemporaries of Mata Hari, followed this path to success. Mata Hari never quite rose to such an influential level. She longed for respectability and aristocratic connections, but never fully acquired either. Her outspoken and erratic personality may have worked against her. Certainly none of Mata Hari’s fellow courtesans exhibited their sexuality in such a blatantly public way. In that respect, Mata Hari’s career more nearly resembled that of a modern pop star like Madonna.
By 1913, Mata Hari was aging, deep in debt, and no longer in such great demand as a performer. She faced increasing competition from similar dancers like Maud Allan, who made the part of Salome her own. Mata Hari was also finding it harder to attract and keep wealthy lovers, and had taken to trolling for men in hotel lobbies. In May 1914 she began rehearsals for a new show in Berlin, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented the show from opening. Mata Hari’s luggage and costumes were impounded by the German government, and she was forced to return to Holland (a neutral country) after an absence of many years. Before long she met up with an old lover, Colonel Baron Van Der Capellen of the Dutch Army, who set her up in a modest house in The Hague. Mata Hari found her new life boring, however, and she pined for the bright lights of Paris. This was to prove her undoing.
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