October 15, 1917. Early morning.
Two sisters of charity enter a cold and quiet Parisian cell, and gently wake the occupant. Though she seemed deep in slumber, Mata Hari arises with the grace and strength that have carried her through life.
She looks into the faces of the sisters, to her lawyer, and then to Captain Bouchardon of the French army.
“I am ready.”
—
Mata Hari’s beginnings are shrouded in as much mystery as her end. Born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle on August 7th, 1876, her father – a hat merchant – had made strategic investments in the oil industry that allowed her and her three younger brothers an opulent childhood.
That would all come to an end, however, shortly after her 13th birthday. Her father went bankrupt after making some poor trades. Hari’s parents divorced as a result, and two years later her mother died. When her father remarried the children were sent to live with various relatives.
Hari ended up with her godfather, who kept a strict eye on the blossoming teen. When she started studying to become a kindergarten teacher, he forced her to leave the school after discovering that the headmaster had been flirting with her. Hari retaliated by fleeting to The Hague, to live with an uncle.
As soon as she turned 18, Hari answered an ad in a Dutch newspaper from an army captain named John MacLeod who was looking to find a wife. She lived with him in the Dutch East Indies – modern Indonesia – and the marriage allowed her to regain the social status she had enjoyed as a child. The couple had two children; a boy who died at the age of two (rumour states he was poisoned by a household worker for reasons unknown, though it seems more likely to be related to complications stemming from the syphilis he’d contracted from his parents), and a girl named Louise.
Financial security came with a price. MacLeod was an abusive alcoholic who blamed Hari – 21 years his junior – for his inability to gain a promotion. He also forced her to seduce local landowners, only for him to burst in while they were having sex and blackmail them under threat of death. “Man is an animal! Let’s make the most of it,” MacLeod told her.
Disillusioned, she left him for another officer, and distracted herself from her misery by joining a local dance company. By 1897 she was so deeply entrenched in the Javan culture that she took on her artistic name, Mata Hari: eye of the day, or simply sun.
Eventually, Hari reunited with MacLeod, and they returned to the Netherlands, officially separating in 1902. Hopes that this would bring an end to MacLeod’s aggression proved all for naught. He refused to pay child support, published letters in the newspaper slandering Hari and telling others not to support her, and eventually kidnapped Louise. Not having the resources to fight him for custody, nor give her a proper life even if she did, Hari gave up hope, and moved to Paris.
Little did she know what was to come.
With no prospects nor money, Hari could only rely on her beauty to earn a living. She took to modelling, appearing nude but for an iconic bejewelled bra, which she wore only because painters and photographers would often make critical and mean comments about her breasts.
It was not the life she wanted, but returning to Holland was not an option, so Hari ended up taking a job as a circus horse rider. She was skilled, but the role held no future.
Considering this, a thought struck her: “what about dancing?”
In no time at all, Hari became one of the most popular dancers in Paris. A local industrialist put together a lavish production in his private museum especially for her, positioning Hari as an exotic dancer from India, and those who viewed her performance were too spellbound to doubt her heritage. She treated it as she had treated her modelling. “I never could dance well; people came to see me because I was the first who dared to show myself naked to the public,” she confided in Dutch artist Piet Van Der Hem.
Her evocative dance became her key back into privileged society, and she accepted it wholeheartedly. She told those who asked that she descended from royalty, recounting strange and fantastic tales that she never retold in case she mixed up the details. It was a publicity stunt, and she was proving herself a natural.
Before long, she was dancing at the Olympia Theatre, one of the most prestigious landmarks of its kind in France. Hari received a remarkable salary of 10,000 francs for her performance; the modern equivalent to nearly $5 million USD.
“Mata Hari personifies all the poetry of India, its mysticism, its voluptuousness, its languor, its hypnotising charm. To see Mata Hari in a rhythm and with attitudes that are poems of wild voluptuous grace is an unforgettable spectacle. A really paradise like dream,” declared Le Journal, one of the biggest newspapers in the country.
And it was only the beginning. Hari danced in Spain, Vienna, and Monte Carlo before entering a relationship with German lieutenant Herr Kepert. He gave her an apartment in Berlin. She disappeared from the public eye, but remained on the tips of tongues across Europe, releasing statements and writing letters to noted individuals at just the right times to remind her audience that she was around.
By the time she returned to the stage in 1908, copious imitators had risen up to take her place. Though she remained prominent as a dancer, she slowly transitioned into the role of a courtesan, and performed her last show on March 13th, 1915.
World War I had broken out by that time, and since the Netherlands had remained neutral in the conflict, Hari was able to cross borders freely. She did so frequently, inevitably attracting the attention of both Allied and Axis powers alike.
In 1916, she arrived in England via ship from Spain, and was arrested under charges of espionage. Hari would tell him that she was working for French Intelligence, but this was never proven.
The following year, the French intercepted a German transmission relating to a spy codenamed H-21. Information on the agent led to belief that H-21 was, in fact, Mata Hari.
It came shortly after a War Ministry plot to determine whether Hari was a German spy. Hari was allowed to obtain the names of six Belgian agents – five who they believed were working for the Germans, and one suspected of being a double agent. Two weeks after she left for Madrid, the double agent was executed by the Germans, while the other five remained in play. This, her beguiling reputation, and links with German military were all the proof they needed.
On February 13th, 1917, Mata Hari was arrested and accused of spying for the Germans, resulting in the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. “My international connections are due of my work as a dancer, nothing else …. Because I really did not spy, it is terrible that I cannot defend myself,” she wrote to the Dutch Consul in Paris. Indeed, no definitive evidence could be provided to prove Hari was H-21, but the French government moved to ensure that wouldn’t be an issue by denying permission for her defence attorney to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses, or even examine his own witnesses directly.
However, she admitted in interrogation to taking money to work as a spy, though claimed she had never actually carried out her duties.
It was no surprise when Hari was found guilty.
On October 15th, 1917, Mata Hari was executed by firing squad. As the soldiers took aim with their rifles, her poise and demeanour remained unchanged.
Whether she was truly guilty or not makes no difference now. The enigmatic ending to a life of such highs and lows is almost morbidly fitting, and has ensured that even without her correspondence, the name of Mata Hari remains in tact in the minds of so many.