Milestones, Dec. 4, 1944

Divorced. Herbert Asbury, 53, slummer in the pasts of U.S. cities (The Gangs of New York, The Barbary Coast, The French Quarter), associate editor of Collier's; by Helen Hahn Asbury, 41, Manhattan advertising executive, sister of repatriated Orientalist Emily Hahn; after 16 years of marriage; in Mexico.

Died. Philip Ainsworth Means, 52, cautious, round-faced anthropologist-ex-explorer, Inca lore expert, speculator about "the most enigmatic and puzzling building in the U.S.," the Newport, R.I. "Old Stone Mill'';* of diabetes; in Boston.

Died. Mrs. Elizabeth White, 59, onetime Princess Der Ling, lady-in-waiting to China's Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi, first high-born Chinese woman to marry a foreigner (Thaddeus White, U.S. Vice Consul at Shanghai); after being run down by a truck; in Berkeley, Calif. Daughter of a Manchu ambassador to France, Princess Der Ling, in America, lectured to eager audiences, wrote reminiscences of Chinese royalty (Son of Heaven, Jades and Dragons), taught Chinese at the University of California.

Died. Florence Foster Jenkins, 76, billowing coloratura, well-to-do sponsor of her own costumed concerts at Manhattan's Ritz-Carlton Hotel; one month after her Carnegie Hall recital debut (where her rose-petal-strewn rendition of Clavelitos was wildly bravoed); of a heart attack; in Manhattan.

Died. Sadakichi Hartmann, eightyish, dramatist, artist, philosopher and mop-haired onetime "King of Greenwich Village"; in St. Petersburg, Fla. Born in Nagasaki, Japan, son of a Korean woman and a German munitions worker, he married three times, begat 15 children, named one set after jewels, another set for flowers, was the boon companion of artistic greats, from Walt Whitman to John Barrymore.

Died. Joseph Caillaux, 81, bald, be-monocled onetime Premier of France, five times Minister of Finance; in Mamers, France. Son of a millionaire (who was himself Minister of Finance), aristocratic, dictatorial Joseph Caillaux, in 1911, appeased Germany in a secret negotiation, ceding part of the French Congo to the Kaiser for a free French hand in Morocco, was forced to resign his premiership. Blazing because of Le Figaro's attacks on Caillaux and the public reprinting of their love letters, his second wife put five bullets into Le Figaro's Editor Gaston Calmette, was acquitted of murder in time to see her husband convicted of "dealing with the enemy" after World War I, jailed and banished from Paris for five years.