Elizabeth
Fisher Read, a scholar and one of Eleanor Roosevelt's
earliest
female political and feminist mentors, was ER's personal
attorney and financial advisor during the first part of
her public career. ER credited Read and Esther
Lape, Read's life partner, with playing
an important role in her education as a political activist.
The two women also formed the nucleus of what eventually
became ER's support network of close female friends devoted
both to her and to the causes she supported. Their three-way
friendship endured until Read's death in 1943. Thereafter,
Lape and ER continued to see each other regularly until
ER's death in 1962.
Born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, in 1872, Read graduated
from Smith College and the University of Pennsylvania
Law
School. An active participant in the woman suffrage movement,
she typified what in the 1920s was known as "the New Woman"
– women who were independent, financially self-supporting,
politically active and socially emancipated. She lived
with
Lape, an educator and publicist, in Greenwich Village and
worked for a variety of social and political causes including
the New York state branch of the League of Women Voters.
She also practiced law and was director of research for
the American Foundation, a private organization dealing
with national and international public affairs issues,
which
Lape directed. In addition, she wrote a book on international
law, translated and edited a book on the World
Court, and helped Lape edit a book on expert medical
testimony.
Read first worked with ER when the latter became director
of the league's national legislation committee in 1920.
At the time Read and Lape were editing the group's weekly
legislative review, City, State and Nation. Impressed
with one another's skills, abilities and brains, the three
women quickly cemented what became both a political partnership
and a warm friendship. Among their professional projects
was a multiyear effort to encourage American participation
in the World Court, an organization
that had been created as part of the League
of Nations.
At their Greenwich Village home, Read and Lape created
an atmosphere that reminded ER of her schooldays with her
teacher, Marie Souvestre, and the three women spent many
hours there reading poetry and discussing political issues.
As first lady, ER rented a floor in Read and Lape's building,
which she used to escape the pressures of her public position.
The three women also spent time at Salt Meadow, the country
house Read and Lape owned. Read died in New York on December
13, 1943.
Sources:
Beasley, Maurine, Holly C. Schulman and Henry R. Beasley, eds. The Eleanor
Roosevelt Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
2001, 429-431.
Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One, 1884-1933. New York: Viking Press,
1992, 292-299.
Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor and Franklin. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1971, 260-261.
Lash, Joseph P. Love, Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday & Co., 1982, 79.
Norton, Mary Beth, Katzman, et al. A People and A Nation: A History of the United States.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001, 657.