Maxwell was, Edward Hirsch observed, “the most present of anyone I’ve ever known as a person. He immediately, if he liked you, started talking to you about your childhood. It sort of dismantled everything else. For me with him it was love at first sight. Friendship was immediate. When he spoke to you it was as if you were the only person.” Benjamin Taylor recalled, “With Bill Maxwell there was no small talk. You just sat down and started talking about books.” Shirley would have prized that complication of sensibility and comportment, that presence, and presence of mind, and presentness, and all the talking about books. She admired Maxwell’s writing, particularly The Folded Leaf, although she was less impressed by The Château, ironically enough the book Francis had helped with. In 1961, early in their friendship, Bill had presented her with a copy, inscribed, “For Shirley Hazzard, whose beautiful and firm beginning it has been my great pleasure to watch.” She wrote the following year to Rache Lovat Dickson that she found The Château “heavy going—it has rather an air of All Done By Hand, it is completely lacking in passion of any kind, or spiritual adventure; this may be a result of his having gone through a profound psychoanalysis between this and his previous books. At any rate, he is an extremely nice person, with a very delicate intuition.” The connection between Shirley and Bill over their longer friendship was intense. Alec Wilkinson described seeing the two of them together as “just sublime. Two gigantic sensibilities that were utterly enfolded with one another.” Maxwell and Francis were also close, but Shirley and Bill were “two people clearly capable of appreciating each other fully. To love each other without having any emotional or erotic complication to it. Just pure love. For the artist, for the character, for the person.” The friendship was a central force in Shirley’s mature life.