From Chapter 3: Another proof of the extraordinary popularity of the new habit is to be found in the fact that by the seventeenth year of the reign of James I—the arch-enemy
of tobacco—that is, by 1620, the Society
of tobacco-pipe-makers had become so very numerous and considerable a body that they were incorporated by royal charter, and bore on their shield a tobacco plant in full blossom. The Society's motto was happily chosen—"Let brotherly love continue."
From Chapter 10: 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."