Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

This experiment in the direction of wooden pipes was interesting, and deserves to be remembered; but it was not long before the briar was introduced and carried everything before it.

It was about 1859 that the use of the root of the White Heath (Erica arborea), a native of the South of France, Corsica, and some other localities, for the purpose of making tobacco-pipes was introduced into this country. The word "brier" or "briar" has no connexion whatever with the prickly, thorny briar which bears the lovely wild rose. It is derived from the French bruyère, heath—the root of the White Heath being the material known as "briar" or "brier," and at first as "bruyer." The Oxford Dictionary quotes an advertisement from the Tobacco Trade Review of so recent a date as February 8, 1868, of a "Heath Pipe: in Bruyer Wood." The briar pipe not only soon drove the clay largely out of use, but immensely increased the number of pipe-smokers. Bulwer Lytton may not have known the briar, but he wrote enthusiastically of the pipe. Every smoker knows the glowing tribute he paid to it in his "Night and Morning," which appeared in 1841. It is terser and more to the point than most panegyrics: "A pipe! It is a great soother, a pleasant comforter. Blue devils fly before its honest breath. It ripens the brain, it opens the heart; and the man who smokes thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

In this "Diary," covering the years 1631-43, there are some forty entries concerning the purchase of what is always, save in one case, called "tobacka." These entries give valuable information as to the prices of the two chief kinds of tobacco. One was imported from Spanish America, which up to 1639 Hayne calls "Varinaes," and after that date "Spanish"; the other was imported from English colonies—chiefly from Virginia. The "Varinaes" kind, Dr. Brushfield suggests, was obtained from Varina, near the foot of the range of mountains forming the west boundary of Venezuela, and watered by a branch of the Orinoco River. Hayne also notes the purchase of "Tertudoes" tobacco, but what that may have been I cannot say. From the various entries relating respectively to Varinaes or Spanish tobacco, and to Virginia tobacco, it is clear that the former ranged in price from 8s. to 13s. per lb., while the latter was from 1s. 6d. to 4s. per lb. There is one entry of "perfumed Tobacka," 10 oz. of which were bought at the very high price of 15s. 6d.

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