  At first, Santayana planned to reside in Europe, and after numerous exploratory trips to several cities, he decided on Paris. However, while he was in England, World War I broke out and he was unable to return to the mainland. First, he lived in London and then primarily at Oxford and Cambridge. After the war, he was more of a traveling scholar, and his principal locales included Paris, Madrid, Ávila, the Riviera, Florence, and Rome. By the late 1920s, he settled principally in Rome, and during the summers, he often retreated to Cortina d’Ampezzo in Northern Italy to write and to escape the heat. Because of his success as a writer, he assisted friends and scholars when they found themselves in need of financial support. For example, when Bertrand Russell was unable to find a teaching post in the U.S. or England because of his views regarding pacifism and marriage, Santayana displayed a characteristic generosity in his plan to make an anonymous gift to Bertrand Russell of the $25,000 royalty earnings from The Last Puritan, at the rate of $5,000 per year, in the letter to George Sturgis (15 July 1937). Despite the fact that he and Russell disagreed radically both politically and philosophically, his memory of their earlier friendship and his regard for Russell’s genius moved him to compassion for Russell’s financial plight.