The Differences of Research data: Mata Hari by Katherine Pym

Mata Hari Performing

As an author of historical fiction, I spend a lot of time researching. Usually, my research centers on London in the 1660’s. Once and awhile, though, I run across some information that doesn’t center around my time of expertise, but find it too interesting not to share.

NOTE: The source I am using differs from most, especially Margaretha’s early life but I cannot ignore this, which gives more dimension to her character. I will let you decide which to take home to your family by making clear the variances in the below text.

Mata Hari was born in Holland on August 7, 1876 as Margaretha Geetruida Zelle. Her parents were religious; she grew up Roman Catholic and was sent to a convent at the early age of 14. Other sources say: “Her mother dead and her adored father bankrupt, teenage Margaretha was sent to train as a kindergarten teacher, only to be seduced by the headmaster.” And another source: “Following her mother's death, Mata Hari and her three brothers were split up and sent to live with various relatives.”

At 18 while on holiday in The Hague, Margaretha met a Scotsman named MacLeod and married him. He was a drunk and a wife abuser. He did—well you know—the typical things brutal men do to women so I won’t bore you with them. Other sources say: “Disgraced and bored, the girl answered a newspaper ad to meet and marry a career colonial officer twenty years her senior who would be soon returning to the Dutch East Indies.” My source continues: He took her to Java where he continued his savagery plus he was a bounder and unfaithful.

Margaretha in Java

No longer a wide-eyed, postulant schoolgirl, her experiences caused Margaretha to deviate from her chaste background. She studied books in the art of sensual love performed in Buddhist temples. She was also introduced to the evocative ritual dances that eventually made her so popular. (Some sources don’t mention this at all.)

Usually, life takes strange turns we never expect. Margaretha endured the savagery of MacLeod, studied sensual love—it’s not recorded if she used this on him or anyone else for that matter while in Java—as her husband gadded about with other women. Some were jealous he was married. One was their nurse who took care of Margaretha & MacLeod’s young son. MacLeod rejected her and in revenge the nurse poisoned their son. Another source: “The marriage dissolved in a nightmare of drinking, gambling, and vicious hatred following the death of their son...”

From now on, I will continue with my source.

Margaretha emerged from this a changed woman. She never showed outward emotion but went forth in life with a face etched in steel. She hated men and she hated MacLeod whom she blamed for the death of their son. Without remorse she reportedly strangled the nurse.

Back in Europe, Margaretha lead a life of the narcissistic.

In France, Margaretha became Mata Hari, a woman born in “...India within the sacred caste of Brahma”. After the birth of two children, her body wasn’t the svelte one of her youth, but that did not stop her from performing naked on stage in Paris. She spoke in a soft, seductive voice and danced erotic dances, some graceful, others lewd, only before seen in Buddhist temples.

She was a sensation throughout Europe. Men begged to have her in their beds. She would oblige them for no less than $7,500 a night. Her lovers listed in the Who’s Who of the times; prime ministers, princes, high up men in their governments.  She demanded luxurious apartments in Paris, had milk baths to keep her skin young and supple. When her influential lovers lost their money, she would kick them to the curb and take another.

She enjoyed sex and would visit brothels (probably not for $7,500) even as she hated the men who bedded her, using them for her gain. She was vain, self-indulgent, cruel and ripe to be approached by the Germans. They sent her to spy-school in Lorrach and gave her what is now known as a pre-war code number.

Mata Hari was relentless. She slept with men then betrayed them. She learned of their plans and sent those plans to the Germans. The figures speak for themselves. It was declared by the judge at her trial she was considered responsible for the deaths of 50,000 allied troops but this number seems trivialized. Other sources say the number is closer to 100,000.

In the end, the Germans betrayed Mata Hari, but she did not think she would die. Too many of her lovers told her of their plans for her escape. When those failed, it was suggested she plea pregnancy, but by now realizing her doom was fixed, Mata Hari refused to see the doctor.  

Vincennes: At the age of 41, Mata Hari was tied with "crimson ropes" to a young tree stripped naked of leaves and branches. She refused the blindfold, did not wince or show emotion when the firing squad cocked their rifles. Several of her lovers watched from the sidelines, some perhaps part of the squad.

She did not utter a sound, but smiled when the major barked the final command to fire. Mata Hari, once a postulant in a convent, her name Margaretha Geetruida Zelle died at 5:47 AM on October 15, 1917, a hated and loved legend of her time.

Many thanks to:

Main source: The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, NY, 1975.

Penn State Science: http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2007-news/Shipman7-2007.htm

bio.o: http://www.biography.com/people/mata-hari-9402348#early-life

All pictures come from WikiCommons Public Domain: his media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. See this page for further explanation.

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Or, for a good read set in London 1664:

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THE LURE OF THE PAST by Juliet Waldron

I love the study of history so much that I’ve always wanted to share that love with others. Like many before me, this longing leads to a desire to write historical novels, the kind which can pull the reader  into another (and often quite unfamiliar) mindset.  The first part of the job is research, a stage I often find easier than the actual work of writing, plotting and character creation. I often read all through and then around subjects, ones which are sometimes rather distant from my original focus.   A used bookstore with a stash of non-fiction can be a dangerous place for my pocketbook. My favorite finds are the sort with long bibliographies, appendices and a high reliance upon original source.

Recently, I picked up “Champlain’s Dream,” by historian David Hackett Fischer, an account of the earliest days of French Canada.  Champlain, a pragmatic, thoughtful French explorer of the early 1600’s, had emerged from the bloody violence of France’s religious wars with an open mind . He'd  made it his life’s work to induce people of varied backgrounds to cooperate for the common good. His belief in humankind, whatever their national origin or religion, allowed him to approach the Indigenous Sauvage with an attitude of respect and interest not shared by many Europeans of the time.

A dream is ordinarily an ephemeral thing. But here, because Champlain recounted his experience 400 + years ago in the forests near the lake now named for him, is one of his. With a war party of sixty Indians, he and two other Frenchmen traveled into the forbidden territory of the Iroquois, with who the Algonquins were eternally at war.  They traveled at night, and every morning, as they drew closer to the “Eastern Gate,” of the Iroquois, guarded the Mohawk, the chiefs asked Champlain “if he had dreamed about their enemies.” For many days, he did not.  Then, one morning, about 11 a.m., he awoke and called the Indians to him. At last, as they’d seemed to expect, the white captain had dreamed.

“I dreamed I saw in the lake near a mountain, our enemies, the Iroquois drowning before our eyes. I wanted to rescue them, but our Indian allies told me that we should let them all die, for they were worth nothing.”

David Hackett Fischer then adds: “The Indians recognized the place in Champlain’s dream as a site that lay just ahead, and they were much relieved…To Champlain’s Indian allies, dreams not only revealed the future. They controlled it.”

A few days later, the Mohawk encountered European firearms in battle for the first time. Surprised by the stunning sight of a man in armor and two sharpshooters wielding long-distance, deadly weapons stationed amid Algonquin ranks, they were defeated. Champlain’s dream, seen by his allies as prophecy, was a true one.

This is the sort of primary source tidbit that writers love, the kind which reveals a vital difference between the mental world of European and Amerindian. It also tells us something about Champlain.  There he was, with two white companions amid a war party upon whose goodwill their survival depended. They were moving through a gigantic, primal forest toward a dangerous objective. We learn that he stumbled into another kind of consciousness, one which transcended his usual understanding of linear time.  The chiefs were now confident of the battles before them and pleased that their new friend had dreamed so positively. Champlain, though he does not speak of it, must have been privately amazed by this rationally inexplicable experience. 

~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

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