With the exception of Elstir, Proust's fictional painter, none of Proust's characters is an Amerophile as Odette and others are Anglophiles. Yet there are no British characters in A la recherche. The nearest we get is the Prince of Wales, who appears “off–stage” as a friend of Swann. When it comes to Proust's depiction of Anglomanie, therefore, the term remains strangely disembodied. This omission is all the more notable given Proust's obvious sympathies with, and interest in, England and Englishness: he was a noted translator of Ruskin; he maintained close friendships with English–speakers, such as Willie Heath (to whom he dedicated Les Plaisirs et les jours), Marie Nordlinger (with whom, alongside his English–speaking mother, he collaborated on his translations of Ruskin), and Sydney Schiff (who was to translate into English Le Temps retrouvé). Conversely (we might say perversely) there are a number of walk–on parts for American characters in the novel. They are all anonymous and in each case female: the American lady with her daughters staying at Balbec (743; II:528); the American girl with her chaperone going down for dinner (1333; IV:165); and the American woman who mistakes Marcel's hotel room for her own, interrupting him while he is trying to persuade “le lift” to act as a go–between for him with Albertine (1354; IV:194).

In one sense what Proust is referring to with such “characters” is the stereotype of the American woman who visited Europe only in order to stay at luxurious hotels, go shopping, or as Paul Morand recollected “[queue] to have their bust sculpted [by Rodin] at a cost of forty thousand gold francs” (2002, 26). The life of energetic indolence and shallow indulgence is exemplified by Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton's The Customs of the Country (1913), her satire on Americans in Paris:

Every moment of her days was packed with excitement and exhilaration.