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A monocle is a type of corrective lens used to correct or enhance the visual perception in only one Human eye. It consists of a circular lens placed in front of the eye and held in place by the eye socket itself. Often, to avoid losing the monocle, a string or wire is connected to the wearer's clothing at one end and, at the other end, to either a hole in the lens or, more often, a wire ring around its circumference.
If customized, monocles can be worn securely with little effort. However, periodic adjustment is common for monocle wearers to keep the monocle from popping. Often only the rich could afford to have a monocle custom-fabricated, while the poor had to settle for ill-fitting monocles that were less comfortable and less secure. In popular perception, a monocle could easily fall off with the wrong facial expression. A once-standard comedic device exploits this: an upper-class gentleman affects a shocked expression in response to some event, and his monocle falls into his drink or smashes to pieces on the floor.
Following the Prussian example monocles became fashionable among the officers of other peacetime European armies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in socially prestigious regiments such as those of the cavalry and guards. In an effort to curb what was seen as an unnecessary affectation, orders were sometimes issued limiting the wearing of monocles to individuals having a genuine optical need.
Monocles were most prevalent in the late 19th century, but are rarely worn today. This is due in large part to advances in optometry which allow for better measurement of refraction error, so that glasses and can be prescribed with different optical power in each eye.
The monocle did, however, gain a following in the stylish lesbian circles of the early 20th century, when lesbians would wear a monocle for effect. Such women included Una Lady Troubridge, Radclyffe Hall, and Weimar German reporter Sylvia von Harden; the painting Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia Von Harden by German expressionist painter Otto Dix depicts its subject wearing a monocle.
Monocle wearers have included British politicians Joseph Chamberlain, his son Austen, Henry Chaplin, and Angus Maude. Percy Toplis (The Monocled Mutineer), Astronomer and The Sky at Night presenter Sir Patrick Moore, founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Portuguese President António de Spínola, filmmakers Fritz Lang and Erich von Stroheim, 19th-century Portuguese writer Eça de Queiroz, Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov, actor Conrad Veidt, Tristan Tzara and Raoul Hausmann, esoteric-fascist Julius Evola, French collaborationist politician Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, singer Richard Tauber, diplomat Christopher Ewart-Biggs (a smoked-glass monocle, to disguise his glass eye), Major Johnnie Cradock, actors Ralph Lynn, George Arliss and Martyn Green, and Karl Marx. In another vein, G. E. M. Anscombe was one of only a few noted women who occasionally wore a monocle. Abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman wore a monocle mainly for getting a closer look at artworks.Schneider, Pierre (Summer 1969). "Through the Louvre with Barnett Newman". Artnews. 68 (4): 34–39, 70–72. Richard Tauber wore a monocle to mask a squint in one eye. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats wore them at times too. The English author, Evelyn Waugh, used a monocle when he was in the Army during World War II and needed to focus his vision using a rifle at a shooting range during his initial training. Future British Conservative Party politician Jacob Rees-Mogg wore a monocle when interviewed by the BBC in 1981, aged 12.
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