Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

===Exile in Britain===

In 1935 at a salon hosted by Carlos Morla Lynch, a diplomat, diarist, amateur musician and closet homosexual working in the Chilean Embassy in Madrid, Cernuda met an English poet called Stanley Richardson, nine years younger than him, who was making a brief visit to the country.  Richardson had already met Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez in London.  They enjoyed some kind of intense but short-lived relationship, commemorated in a poem dated 20–22 March 1935 and included in ''Invocaciones'', before Richardson returned home.<ref name="Taravillo1315  ">Taravillo Años españoles p 315</ref>  In February 1938,<ref name="Stanley Richardson and Spain">Stanley Richardson and Spain</ref> Richardson arranged for him to give a series of lectures in Oxford and Cambridge.  At the time, Cernuda thought that he would be away from Spain for one or two months, however this was to be the start of an [[Spanish Republican exiles|exile]] that would last for the rest of his life.  The lectures never took place.  Richardson was well-connected, however, and arranged a party for him, attended by celebrities such as [[Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl|the Duchess of Atholl]], [[Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon]], the Chinese ambassador, [[Rebecca West]] and [[Rose Macaulay]].  Even by then, the situation in Spain meant that it was not advisable for Cernuda to return and so Richardson suggested that he should join a colony of evacuated Basque children at [[Eaton Hastings]] on Faringdon's estate.<ref name="Murphy: Pub Poets">Murphy: Pub Poets</ref>

After a few months in England, penniless and barely able to speak English, he went to Paris with the intention of returning to Spain.  But he stayed on in Paris on receiving news of what was happening in his native land.<ref name="Cernuda644">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 644</ref>   In August 1938, Richardson and Cernuda met again in Paris but, to judge from various of Cernuda's letters of the time, the intensity of their relationship had greatly weakened.<ref name="Epistolario246">Cernuda: Epistolario August 1938 Letters to Rafael Martínez Nadal p 246 and 247</ref> In September 1938 Richardson secured him a position as Spanish assistant in [[Cranleigh School]].<ref name="Cernuda645">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 645</ref> In January 1939 he became the ''lector'' at the [[University of Glasgow]].  Richardson was to die on 8 March 1941 in an air raid while dancing at [[the Ritz London|the Ritz]].  Cernuda wrote an elegy for him which was included in ''Como quien espera el alba'' in 1942.<ref name="Taravillo1316">Taravillo Años españoles p 316</ref> There is a poignant postlude. In August 1944, while walking around Cambridge, Cernuda noticed a framed photograph of Richardson hanging in the window of a Red Cross shop. On the back was part of the name of his godmother. Cernuda bought it.<ref name="Epistolario383">Epistolario August 1944 letter to Gregorio Prieto p 383</ref>

Neither Glasgow nor Scotland appealed to him, which is perhaps noticeable in the downbeat tone of the poems he wrote there.  From 1941 onward, he spent his summer vacations in Oxford, where, despite the ravages of the war, there were plenty of well-stocked bookshops.  In August 1943, he moved to [[Emmanuel College, Cambridge]], where he was much happier.<ref name="Cernuda648">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 648</ref>  In Seville he used to attend concerts and music had always been very important to him.  The artistic life of Cambridge and London made it easier for him to develop his musical knowledge. [[Mozart]] was the composer whose music meant the most to him<ref name="Cernuda649">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 649</ref> and he devoted a poem to him in his last collection, ''Desolación de la Quimera''.

In 1940, while Cernuda was in Glasgow, Bergamín brought out in Mexico a second edition of ''La realidad y el deseo'', this time including section 7, ''Las nubes''.  A separate edition of this collection appeared in a pirated edition in Buenos Aires in 1943.  He had been afraid that the situation in Spain after the end of the Civil War would create such an unfavourable climate for writers who had gone into exile like him, that his work would be unknown to future generations.  The appearance of these two books was a ray of hope for him.<ref name="Cernuda647">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 647</ref>

In July 1945, he moved to a similar job at the Spanish Institute in London.  He regretted leaving Cambridge, despite the range and variety of theatres, concerts and bookshops in the capital.  He began to take his holidays in Cornwall because he was tired of the big city and urban life.<ref name="Cernuda651">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 651</ref>  So, in March 1947, when his old friend [[Concha de Albornoz]], who had been working at [[Mount Holyoke College]], [[Massachusetts]], wrote to offer him a post there, he accepted with alacrity.<ref name="Cernuda651"/>  He managed to secure a passage on a French liner from Southampton to New York, where he arrived on September 10.  He was coming from a country that was impoverished, still showing many signs of war damage and subject to rationing so the shops of New York made it seem as if he were arriving in an earthly paradise.<ref name="Cernuda654">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Historial de un libro p 654</ref>  He also responded favourably to the people and wealth of Mount Holyoke where, "for the first time in my life, I was going to be paid at a decent and fitting level".<ref name="Cernuda654"/>