Because White showed signs of ill health after the move to Britain, he was ordered by his doctor to maintain a vigorous athletic regimen outdoors.

These orders led White to become an avid fox hunter; an avocation that in turn allowed him to meet many of the leading figures in Victorian Britain.

[4] White's new wife was an ambitious and hard-working woman who encouraged her husband to pursue the career in diplomacy in which his years in Europe had interested him.

After three years of networking, White's efforts were rewarded in the summer of 1883 with the secretaryship of the U.S. legation in Vienna, working under minister Alphonso Taft.

After seven years in that post, under ministers Edward J. Phelps, Robert T. Lincoln, and Thomas F. Bayard, White was removed from office for political reasons in October 1893.

The Whites now made themselves welcome in salons throughout Washington, making or renewing friendships with Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Chauncey Depew, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Levi P. Morton, among many others.

As acting chargé d'affaires while awaiting Choate's arrival, White played a key role in the negotiations leading to the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty.

[6] On March 6, 1905,[1] White received his long-awaited promotion to Ambassador, as President Roosevelt named him to represent the United States with Italy.

On December 19, 1906,[1] White received another promotion from Roosevelt, this time to be the U.S. ambassador to France, replacing Robert Sanderson McCormick who retired due to his health.

He and his wife were sequestered in Berlin for two weeks, and then were able to leave for home via the Netherlands with their daughter's two children, who spent the first two years of the war in the United States.

In 1914, the Wilson administration asked White first to head the American delegation to the 1914 Pan-American Conference and later to serve as Minister to Haiti.

[10] When Germany declared that it would conduct unrestricted submarine warfare against U.S. ships, White realized that U.S. entry into the war was inevitable, and he supported it wholeheartedly.

Wilson also valued White as being the most experienced American diplomat of the time, and a man who knew most of the European leaders with whom the commission would deal.

Upon his return to the United States, White continued to try to bring Wilson and Lodge together to compromise and get the treaty approved by the Senate.

The rejection of the treaty ended White's diplomatic career, though he continued to be active in public life, as a trustee for the National Geographic Society, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution, among other organizations.