`Il faut," the eponymous hero of Voltaire's 1759 novel famously concluded, "cultiver votre jardin." A little over two centuries later, in her house at the edge of the Burren near Kinvarra, Gabrielle Warnock concluded much the same thing. Unlike Candide she hadn't been subjected to earthquakes, auto-dafes and the unwelcome attentions of the Bulgarian army - but she had completed two historical novels which nobody, despite the success of her debut novel Fly in the Web and the praise garnered by her short stories, seemed to want to publish. "And so I decided, what the heck, I'll build a garden instead," she says, indicating the impressive chunk of Co Galway which she and her husband are in the throes of converting from a field to a wonderful jumble of colours and textures woven together by old-fashioned dry-stone walls.
The scale of Gabrielle Warnock's garden project would make even Candide blanch. Enormous boulders squat everywhere, waiting to be set into place; there are raised beds at various stages of development, and a well-worn spade which tells a mute tale of its own; in a sheltered nook, the underlying Burren limestone has been carefully exposed and the delicate native plants are being gently encouraged. A herbaceous border, delphiniums and ornamental grasses swaying in a most untypical zephyr-like breeze, meanders along one wall. Two years ago the sea barged right in and swamped everything in it; 80 per cent of the plants died, but the rest are still here. "This," says Warnock with satisfaction, "is a survivor's garden."
She is something of a survivor herself, Gabrielle Warnock, and the publication of one of those two historical novels, The Silk Weaver, is a happy ending of sorts: the book is set in the period leading up to the 1798 rebellion, which makes its appearance during this month's bicentenary celebrations of that event a particularly timely one. It may come as a surprise to many readers that Dublin had a thriving silk industry in the late 18th century and Gabrielle Warnock confesses that it came as a surprise to her, too. "I came across several references to silk weaving in Dublin in general histories, but it was all very vague - and then I was reading a book about Huguenots in Ireland and discovered a parliamentarian in Bandon who brought 60 Huguenot families to Cork to try and establish a silk industry there."
The attempt was unsuccessful; the damp climate killed the silkworms and the weavers all left, most to go to London. "But I thought, `well, what if one of them had gone to Dublin instead?' And then I found a book which had all sorts of information about the silk industry in Dublin. It was centred in the Liberties and at its height there were up to 3,000 looms which, according to the author's calculations, employed 10 or 11,000 people."
The various strands of her story were beginning to come together but it was only when Warnock came across the letters of the government informer and editor of the Freeman's Journal, Francis Higgins, in the National Archive that the period really came alive for her. "He was a very servile, self-important sort of character and that comes across in the letters. They were a pleasure to read because he was so unctuous - perfect material for a fictional baddie." The letters, some with seals still attached, have been collected into folders bound together with a leather strap. Warnock is full of praise for the staff of the National Archive who, she says, pointed her in the right direction and were endlessly helpful. "The reading room is a marvellous place - and anyone can go there. You don't even need a letter of introduction. You just sign yourself in and hand over all your worldly gods. You have to write in pencil and you can't chew sweets; that's about it."
As she delved deeper into Higgins's letters, Warnock found herself imagining what it must have been like to live in Dublin in the run-up to the Rebellion. She also found an unexpected link to the silk industry. "Higgins ran a spy ring - he had seven people working for him - and at one point he tried to get the services of an unemployed silk weaver. But the weaver was afraid to give him information because of what he called `committees of silence' which would have despatched him had they discovered that he was an informer. "I began to get a sense of the fear of betrayal, the huge sense of shadowiness that must have existed at that time. I wanted to write an action-based novel that showed the element of chance which really overwhelms people in a period such as that - a period where you think you're in control of your life, but you're not, and you don't know why. You don't know who's watching you - who's your friend, who's your enemy."
Seated on a stone bench in a corner of her garden with the sun beating down and no sound but birdsong and the grumbling of an occasional cow, Warnock says her own family background - her father is an archbishop and she grew up in Cork and Kilkenny before taking a diploma in social studies in Trinity, followed by a law degree - gave her little by way of preparation for the writing of historical novels. But the form appeals to her and she is currently researching another one. "I love the freedom it gives you; it seems to help my imagination, I don't know why. And I love the way you can weave in real events." For all its deft recreation of late 18th-century Dublin, the real strength of The Silk Weaver lies in its vividly-drawn characters - the eponymous Huguenot hero, his good-natured Dublin employer, the sinister government spy who appears only through his letters, and a bevy of strong women, including a wife, a fiancee, two lovers, a demented daughter and a determined mother - and in the twists and turns of its plot, which interweaves fictional and historical situations with the same kind of thoughtful skill which is evident in the design of the Warnock garden.
The author says her extraordinarily feisty female characters were inspired by the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft. "When I first read her very modern-sounding feminist polemic, I assumed she was a highly self-possessed woman who organised her life out of existence. But then I read a biography, and found out that first she had a grand passion for someone who didn't return her love, and then went off to Paris with an American frontiersman and had a baby with him although they weren't married. Then he left her for another woman. And when I read all this, I thought, `right, I can have my characters go off the rails - women did go off the rails at the end of the 18th century'." Hence the creation of Charlotte Paradis, a female master weaver - unusual, but not impossible, Warnock insists - who marries her cousin in order to legitimise the two bastard sons she has had to one of her own journeymen, and Letitia Sweetman, married to a "respectable" Protestant burgher who turns out to be anything but respectable.
"Mary Wollstonecraft had this theory that, because of the economic basis of marriage, it was more important for a woman to preserve her reputation than her moral integrity. Letitia is an intelligent woman who has read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman but who can't bear to lose the advantages of what her upbringing has taught her. That's what happens to a lot of people - they see the way that they would like to go, but they can't bring themselves to go that way." To reveal what happens at the end of The Silk Weaver, or even hint at how its delightfully intricate plot develops, would be an act of vandalism. Suffice it to say that even the formidable Ms Wollstonecraft would have to approve of the role the various women play in the story - and of the way they fight for themselves, their beliefs and their loved ones in a world weighted heavily against them.
The Silk Weaver is published by Trident Press at £12.99.
