Here’s another something I ran across while researching bloomers and rational dress: sheet music from 1850 for “The Bloomer’s Complaint: A Very Pathetic Song for Piano Forte”. I’ve typed up the lyrics for easy reading — if you happen to play piano and are interested in the music, it’s right here on Google Books. Personally, I have no ability to read music, but I’m imagining it as ideally performed something like Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster singing at the piano.

Dear me, what a terrible clatter they raise,
Because that old gossip Dame Rumor
Declares, with her hands lifted up in amaze,
That I’m coming out as a Bloomer,
That I’m coming out as a Bloomer.
I wonder how often these men must be told
When a woman a notion once siezes,
However they ridicule, lecture or scold,
She’ll do, after all, as she pleases,
She’ll do, after all, as she pleases.

They know very well that their own fashions change
With each little change of the season,
But Oh! it is “monstrous” and “dreadful” and “strange”
And “out of all manner of reason,”
And “out of all manner of reason”
If we take a fancy to alter our dress,
And come out in style “a la Bloomer,”
To hear what an outcry they make, I confess
Is putting me quite out of humor,
Is putting me quite out of humor.

I’ll come out next week, with a wide Bloomer flat
Of a shape that I fancy will fright them,
I had not intended to go quite to that,
But I’ll do it now, only to spite them,
But I’ll do it now, only to spite them
With my pants “a la Turque” and my skirts two feet long
All fitting of course, most completely
These grumblers shall own after all, they are wrong,
And that I, in a Bloomer, look sweetly,
And that I, in a Bloomer, look sweetly.