Henry James Senior died on 18 December 1882. Neither of his two eldest sons was present: Henry was travelling back to America from England; William was staying in Henry's rooms in London when news of the death reached him. On 26 December Henry wrote to William giving him an account of their father's final hours, as told to him by Alice and then refracted through his embellishing consciousness to evoke a pious image of melancholic romanticism. James Senior had faced death with calmness and determination: ‘Father had been so tranquil, so painless, had died so easily &, as it were, deliberately, & there had been none – not the least – of that anguish & confusion which we imagined in London.’ His final illness could most comfortably be understood as something ‘as full of beauty as it was void of suffering’ (339). The old philosopher had finished with the temporal world with which he had been burdened and death was to be embraced: ‘the “softening of the brain” was simply a gradual refusal of food, because he wished to die. There was no dementia except a sort of exaltation of belief that he had entered into “the spiritual life” … He prayed and longed to die’ (339).

The brothers were preoccupied with the question of respectfully dealing with their father's intellectual legacy.