Milestones, Dec. 18, 1939

Married. Robert Larrimore ("Bobby") Riggs, 21, cocky little U. S. national amateur tennis champion; and Catherine Ann Fischer, 21; in Chicago.

Divorced. Ruth Elizabeth (Bette) Davis Nelson, 31, front-rank cinemactress; by Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr., 32, Manhattan advertising man, onetime piano-playing crooner; after a seven-year marriage; in Hollywood, Calif. Grounds : her career.

Died. Lewellyn Powys, 55, third of the literary Powys brothers (the others, Theodore Francis and John Cowper), descendant of William Cowper and John Donne; of tuberculosis; in Davos Platz, Switzerland. Ill off and on for 30 years, Lewellyn Powys underscored in his writings (best known: Ebony and Ivory, Skin for Skin, The Cradle of God) a hedonistic design for living : "We should grow less involved in society and more deeply involved in existence."

Died. Ernest Sutherland Bates, 60, insatiably curious author & critic, onetime literary editor of the Dictionary of American Biography; of a heart attack; in The Bronx, N. Y. In one work-crammed year (1936) Dr. Bates produced: The Story of the Supreme Court, The Story of Congress, Hearst, the Lord of San Simeon (coauthor), The Bible Designed To Be Read as Living Literature. Few minutes before his death Author Bates had concluded the preface to his latest book, American Faith, treatise on U. S. religions from 1860 to the present.

Died. Ernest ("Uncle Ernest") Henry Schelling, 63, lanky, walrus-mustached U. S. pianist & composer, for 16 years avuncular if unsensational conductor of New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society's Young People's concerts (for children); suddenly, of cerebral embolism; in Manhattan. At deathbed-side was his four-month bride, Helen Huntington ("Peggy") Marshall Schelling, 21-year-old niece of Mrs. Vincent Astor.

Died, James Harvey Gravell, 63, president and only stockholder of American Chemical Paint Co., who three years ago paid off $100,000 in personal debts for 76 employees; of cancer of the liver; in Abington, Pa. In the last three years he issued $200,000 in bonuses. Reason for his beneficence: ". . . Partly selfish, for I have found that an employe free of debt is a happy and more efficient employe. ..."

Died. Henry Stevens, 70, one of the acquitted defendants in the unsolved, tabloid-trumped-up Hall-Mills murder case (1926); of heart disease; in Lavalette, N. J. Two co-defendants survive him : his sister Frances Stevens Hall, widow of the murdered minister, and his lethargic brother Willie, who made a monkey out of cross-examining Attorney Alexander Simpson.