Once, in either SO or SM, VN mentioned the similarity bt a shaggy-dog and a willow, my vague recollection places it in the Riviera.

Recently I came across a description based on this image, in RLSK, concerning Clare's vivid imagination ("the muscle of the soul") . Clare also posessed " that real sense of beauty which has far less to do with art than with the constant readiness to discern the halo round a frying-pan or the likeness between a weeping-willow and a Skye terrier."  I forgot all about it (shaggy dogs, shagbarks, willows...) and now, going through PF, I re-discovered that, just after Aunt Maud died, a basket where her half-paralyzed Skye terrier once lay, "was the first object to perform". Kinbote informs us that skye terriers belong to "the breed called in our country 'weeping-willow dog'. "

 

 

(A few days ago, a mere thematic coincidence: someone sent me a cartoon with a dog holding an umbrella and sitting under a willow...