"Amidst a thousand dandelions,
One shining orchid stands."

Mata Hari was born in Holland on august 7, 1876. The name on her birth certificate reads, Margaretha Geertruida, daughter of Adam Zelle and his wife Antje van de Meulen. Margaretha's father was a wealthy businessman. Throughout her youth 'M'Greet,' as she was affectionately called, was accustomed to servants and a life of luxury. Her father's financial standing allowed him to send her to Miss Buy's school, where she joined the daughters of the socially established citizens. The only foreign language taught by Miss Buys was French, the fashionable language of the time. Later on Margaretha continued her studies at the high school for girls on the Groote Houtstraat, where English and German were also part of the curriculum.

In 1889, when Margaretha was thirteen years old, the father's business faltered and finally went bankrupt. This was the beginning of the disintegration of the Zelle family. For one year Mr. Zelle tried to re-establish himself. The pressure of survival caused the parents to separate. Nine months later her mother died, and the breakup of the Zelle family was completed.

As the children were dispersed to willing and available relatives, Margaretha went to live with her godfather who had to decide what to do with his ward who by them was fifteen years old. It was time to think of her future and the making of a living. A plan was formulated to send her to Leiden to be trained as a kindergarten teacher at the only school of its kind in existence in Holland. The choice could have not been worse, for she was definitely not fit for such a career. Such a job was good for a "motherly" girl, and M'greet was a "personality." As it turned out, the headmaster of the school fell in love with her. With her sense of style and audacity she soon conquered this gray-headed intellectual who became her father and her boyfriend. Of course, considering the morals of the times, their affair probably never got beyond the hand-holding stage. But the principal's public displays of affection became such common gossip that her godfather pulled her out of the school and sent her to live with another uncle of hers, Mr. Taconis, in the Hague. She was by now seventeen slender, with long black hair, and what were described as saucy, impudent eyes.

The Hague was a town where many officers from the Colonial Army in the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia, used to spend their leave. Margaretha fell in love with the uniform. She was exceptionally tall for a Victorian woman, five foot nine inches. Her mannerisms and straightforwardness would result in this single female taking it upon herself to answer an ad in the personal section of the daily paper. It read:

"Officer on home leave from Dutch East Indies would like to meet girl of pleasant character - object matrimony."

She wrote that she was all by herself in The Hague and was clever enough to enclose a photograph of herself. The officer, Rudolph John Mac Led, was intrigued and started corresponding with her. Six days after their first meeting they became engaged. M'greet's letters to her fiancé were, for that time, forward, loving, and sensual. On July 11, 1895, after three and one half months of courtship they were married. He was thirty nine, she was not yet nineteen. Several writers have stated that the reason for their hasty marriage was that Margaretha was pregnant on her wedding day. But, according to Sam Waagenaar, whose biography on Mata Hari was published in 1965, he personally received a copy from the Vital Statistics Bureau of the City of Amsterdam, which gives the birth date of Norman John, son of John Mac Leod and his wife Margaretha Zelle, as January 13, 1897. That would have meant that she gave birth to their firstborn eighteen months after their wedding day.

M'greet's husband was soon to find out what it meant to be married to a very young and pretty girl. Men would flirt with her on the street provoking him to defend her honor. He soon would accuse her of flirting. In spite of her attractiveness he was observed to be quite rough with her in public and his friend De Balbian Verster said that just three weeks after the wedding John asked him to keep his wife company while he kept a date at a brothel with two girls and expected to be home rather late. It was a habit he picked up in the East Indies and throughout his marriage he did not change his ways. One lady who was a close friend of the family had the impression that "Margaretha was a young woman with the best intentions who suffered greatly from her husband's jealously, rude manners, and neglect, which was already in evidence during the first weeks after their return from their honeymoon."

The Matron
At the time of their marriage, Rudolph John Mac Leod, always known as John, was an aging, balding, battle-scarred soldier who seemed to be the perfect replacement for her father. Margaretha had no dowry, which was usually expected of marriageable girls. Also, she was too tall and from an early age did not show promise of a bosom. Marriage was her haven from the reality of abandonment by her father and the uncertainty of a future without any money or work skills. But her marriage to the uneven tempered and excitable Mac Leod was doomed to failure. She endured many rude insults in public and her home life was becoming unbearable. There was hardly a day without trouble.

The birth of their son in 1897, Norman John, seemed to bring the Mac Leods closer together but finances were becoming a problem due to the expenses of the wedding, honeymoon, and a new baby. Five months after their son was born, they left for the Dutch East Indies for what Margaretha thought was going to be a great adventure. She was twenty years old and her husband was now forty-one. After being in the East Indies for one year Margaretha gave birth to a daughter. On May 2, 1898, a girl was born named Jeanne Louise but always called by her nickname Non, an abbreviation of the word Nonah, which in Malayalam simply means young girl. It was not a happy time. There were daily squabbles and unpleasant situations. Margaretha sighed with relief when John was transferred to the city of Medan. The plan was to send for her at a later date when he got settled. Margaretha and her two children were taken to live with the Van Rheedes. He was the chief accountant for the Dutch army in the East Indies. While Margaretha was staying at the Van Rheedes she liked to dress in a native 'sarong' and 'kabaja,' skirt and blouse. In contrast, to her regular dress of laced up, tight fitting corsets, she enjoyed the loose brightly patterned clothing. Since she showed an interest, she was invited to attend the Javanese dance dramas, which often went on for days. She became fascinated with the history, language, and culture of Indonesia. Secretly she began to learn Malayalam, a word here, a word there. At parties in the local club, when soldiers and their wives were entertained by the folk performances of the natives, M'greet would join in their dances, flailing herself about uninhibitedly to the delight of the onlookers. In a letter to her relatives in 1897 she said that she was asked to dance for the officers in the Dutch East Indies and that she had taken the name of Mata Hari, which in Malayalam meant 'The eye of the dawn.' Margaretha was also becoming interested in Hindu mythology and would seek out people to translate the dance dramas. She began to identify more and more with the Hindu pantheon. Sometimes alone in her room she would perform the slow, hypnotic dances, even when the only musical accompaniment were the sounds of a gamelon orchestra in her head. She was becoming an Apsara, A Celestial Dancing Girl, whose moments of happiness were only being realized when she was dancing for the Gods.

For a long time John Mac Leod sent no money to his wife and children. It was a source of embarrassment for Margaretha. In long letters to his relatives John complained about M'greet's lack of maternal instincts. To Margaretha he wrote in length how she should be prepared to clean the house herself, devoting long paragraphs to emphasizing that even though she was now the garrison commander's wife, she should not neglect her wifely and motherly duties. When he finally sent for her they had few brief moments of happiness, especially when they were hosting officials. M'greet loved to dress for these functions and shine as the wife of the army commander. But her husband resented the attention she received in public. In a letter from the East Indies she complained that her husband wouldn't buy her any clothes because he was afraid she would be too beautiful. Meanwhile the young lieutenants pursued her and fell in love with her. It was becoming more difficult for her to behave in a way, which gave her husband no cause for reproaches. At home, life was increasingly unbearable and neighbors recalled that their quarreling would interfere with their sleep. John drank heavily and became violent. He often took her by force after beating her into submission. She became his scapegoat, his brutal release over his frustrations with army politics, their lack of money, differences of age, her physical beauty, and, her interest in native lore. More and more she irritated him. He took a native mistress. She began to withdraw into her fantasy of Hindu myth. Someone gave her books, which she hid and secretly read of the sexual practices of the Hindus. She read the Coq Sastra and the Kamasutra. A world of sensuality hitherto unexplored by Europeans, much less Victorian women, was revealed to this budding nymph.

About a month after Margaretha settled in Medan, both of her children were mysteriously poisoned. Her two-and-a-half-year-old son Norman died but the little girl was saved because she hadn't eaten much of her supper. The hospital attributed the cause of death to poison found in the sauce poured over their rice. Rumors circulated as to the reason for the poisoning. One was the Mac Leod had beaten a native soldier who was in love with the children's nurse. To revenge her lover she poisoned the children. Although the prime suspect was the nurse, she was never charged and the case was never solved. Mac Leod accused Margaretha of neglect, which had resulted in the death of their son. Their relations became more strained than ever. At this time he was transferred back to Java to the village of Banjoe Biroe where they decided on a legal separation. Margaretha came down with a serious case of Typhoid fever and was sent to Kroewoek to recuperate. Alone and miserable at being left with his duties and also the care of their infant daughter, John wrote to and complained to his cousin in Holland that Margaretha's illness was an expensive business. He often complained about money. In an earlier letter to his wife he said, "The thing that makes me so often inwardly complain is the fact that we never have any financial luck, and what a great many rotten things we have been obliged to do on account of all that lack of money."

For many years now Mac Leod had not been in good health. In October of 1900 John decided to retire at age forty-four. It was cheaper to live on his pension in Indonesia than Holland so the unhappy family settled in Sindanglaja, a small village near Bandung. The situation became intolerable for this young girl in her early twenties, married to an older man whom she now despised, with barely enough money to make ends meet. She wrote to her father how stingy he was but found the money to frequent bordellos, and that he was cruel to her, often threatening her with a gun. Their family doctor was worried that John was "unbalanced" and commended Mrs. Mac Leod for her respectable behavior in spite of the insults which her husband thrust on her constantly in public.

Margaretha's frequent requests to return to Holland were granted when in March of 1902 they boarded a naval transport to Amsterdam. At least of there would be no separation it would be on her home ground. They were both tired of life in the Indies. There were too many sad memories.

Once in Holland, the couple fought incessantly. Margaretha came home one day to find the apartment empty. John left and took their four-year-old daughter with him. She tracked them down, was awarded a separation with support which was never paid, after which John abducted his daughter again. Separated, penniless, and with no work skills, the future looked bleak for this twenty-seven year old female. She remembered in the East Indies how intrigued she became as she read the Dutch newspapers which described the good life in Paris, then the center of culture and the arts. Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Colette, Diaghilev, and a barrage of talent hitherto unknown, converged on that beautiful receptive city. It gave her an abstract dream toward an unknown but somehow more hopeful future. She decided to go to Paris to try her luck. Years later when she became famous, a reporter asked her why she had gone to Paris - why not somewhere else. Mata Hari innocently raised her eyebrows. "I don't know, " she said, "I thought that all women who ran away from their husbands went to Paris."

Bibliography
Mata Hari - A Biography, by Sam Waagenaar
Mata Hari - the True Story, by Russell Warren Howe
Mata Hari, by Major Thomas Coulson
The Rise and Fall of Mata Hari, by Erica Ostrovsky