I heard one of those jokey “his monocle dropped on the floor jokes” and it got me to wondering about real life monocle users. How exactly did monocle users a 100 years ago keep their monocles securely fastened? Did the frequent use of a monocle have problems with their facial muscles? And how common was the use of different monocles for each eye?
You just knew there had to be a website devoted to all things monocular:
MadAboutMonocles.com
I’ve never heard of anybody wearing two different monocles at once: if you need to correct the vision in both eyes simultaneously, you wear spectacles.
There also are monocle frames, like this one, that make it easier to wear them.
Will one of these make me look ejumacated whilst looking at diamonds?
No, you’ll look even more ignorant. Jeweler’s loupes are for looking at diamonds.
Recently I’ve read that it was considered an unforgivable act of lese-majesty to wear standard eyeglasses while adressing royalty - something offensive about peering at them through glass.
In Germany this lead to the stereotype used by Eric Von Stroheim and Werner Klemperer. In Great Britain, the main monocle-wearer that comes to mind is Jospeph Chamberlain, who seems to never let himself be photographed without one. Chamberlain was not an aristocrat, had not attended Oxford or Cambridge, an so maybe he wore it to announce “Yeah, I need this. 'Cause I talk to kings, bitch!”
The daughter of a colleague of mine thought I looked very distinguished when she saw me wearing a monocle.
I’ve always seen monocles attached to a strap so they don’t hit the floor after falling out, they just dangle.
But it doesn’t always help if the monocle falls out and hits the hard corner of a table.
Do monocles come in different sizes?
Like with lenses in glasses they are filed down around the edge to an appropriate size.
A monocle with trifocal lensing is on my short list of things to buy when I become fabulously rich.
I will wear it just to annoy people.
And a small dog will accompany me on a golden chain.
And her name will be ‘Fifi’ and she will growl and bark and any who dare approach my monocle-wearing presence.
Next step will, of course, be world domination.
I suppose at that point, I will seek out the advice of others here on this board, notably Skald the Rhymer.
I haven’t actually worked out many of the details this morning.
I’m still working on the ‘becoming fabulously wealthy’ part.
However, a monocle would work well with a steampunk costume. Everyone wears the same goggles and I like to stand out in a crowd.
So you want a monogle then.
So did the typical monocle-wearer leave it “on” all the time, like I wear my glasses? Did they walk around with them in place? Or did they lift them up to their eye only when needed, like modern reading glasses?
His was the monocle in our time.
(Apologies for the typo in the name) Yes, that’s an example of the sins of the father visited upon the son
(there’s another fashion trend to revive: those swallowtail coats with black & gold striped trousers that ineffectual diplomats used to wear)
AFAICT many would do so: if you really needed vision correction or cosmetic alteration in one eye, you’d want the monocle there continuously. The diplomat Christopher Ewart-Biggs, for example, wore a smoked-glass monocle over a glass eye to disguise its artificial appearance.
Many others, of course, just popped in the monocle for taking an especially close look at something.
So what was the point? Nowadays if you only need correction in one eye, you get glasses with plain glass for the other eye (at least I assume that’s the case, since I don’t see monocles being used). Why did monocles go out of fashion?
Like this?
– Puttin’ On the Ritz, Irving Berlin
Huh. 3/4 of a century since that movie. Maybe we are overdue for a revival.
WAGging, but it seems that a monocle takes a bit more practice to wear with ease and is somewhat less secure. I imagine that the three-point ear-nose-ear support structure of the standard spectacle frame is more stable and comfortable for most people.