From a keynote address given by Cecil Woolf, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s nephew, to the fourteenth annual Virginia Woolf conference:
Despite her rather sombre appearance, Virginia could be extremely funny.The image she has in some people’s minds of a sad and deeply depressed woman is false. (Nicole Kidman in The Hours springs to mind.) Quite the contrary. Leonard remembered that during the First World War when they sheltered in the basement of their London lodgings from enemy bombing, Virginia made the servants laugh so much that he complained he was unable to sleep. My recollection of her is of a fun-loving, witty and, at times, slightly malicious person. Leonard himself had a dry and laconic sense of humour.
The latter is quite apparent from Leonard Woolf’s Growing.