LETTERS LINK P T BARNUM TO PROVIDENCE MAYOR
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The arrival of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Providence this week jogged Paul E. Campbell's memory.
When Campbell, city archivist, arrived last June, he began poking around his dusty treasury of history high atop City Hall. He soon ran across a file drawer marked miscellaneous documents that contained, among other things, a broadside for a show that traveled through the city in the 19th century.
"It seemed to be a file of interesting tidbits that someone was collecting," he said Friday. He poked further. Embedded in the collection was a letter from famed showman P.T. Barnum, written to Thomas A. Doyle, who served several terms as mayor, including a stretch from 1870 to 1881.
When Campbell, city archivist, arrived last June, he began poking around his dusty treasury of history high atop City Hall. He soon ran across a file drawer marked miscellaneous documents that contained, among other things, a broadside for a show that traveled through the city in the 19th century.
"It seemed to be a file of interesting tidbits that someone was collecting," he said Friday. He poked further. Embedded in the collection was a letter from famed showman P.T. Barnum, written to Thomas A. Doyle, who served several terms as mayor, including a stretch from 1870 to 1881.
PHINEAS T. BARNUM 
THOMAS A. DOYLEThat led to a check of Doyle's correspondence file. Out popped several other letters from Barnum, who lived from 1810 to 1891.
Campbell displayed them for a visitor Friday. They are as pristine as the day they were written, although time has blanched the ink to a shade of brown.
In a hand whose calligraphic characteristics hint at the use of a quill pen and inkpot, Barnum scribbled a note to Doyle on May 27, 1876, when "P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Circus" came to town during the Centennial Year.
On stationery embossed in red with the name "Waldemere Bridgeport Ct.," Barnum wrote:
"Mayor Doyle -- there are two orphan asylums in Providence -- Protestant and Catholic. I [word indecipherable] to invite the children of each and prefer number [?] of attendants to visit the theater on the morning of our 2d day 6th inst. . . . P. T. Barnum."
Barnum's traveling venture morphed several times over the years, also being known as "The Greatest Show on Earth," after which he partnered with James Bailey. There followed "The Barnum & London Circus," and "Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth." Further mergers eventually produced the modern show with the convoluted moniker that is performing this weekend in Providence.
But the circus did not always dominate the Barnum-Doyle correspondence.
On June 1, 1876, in the days when Providence boasted more than one daily newspaper, Barnum penned a somewhat mysterious missive to "My Dear Mayor":
"I have written to editors of Bulletin-Herald-Journal-Press & Star. Let it pass till I visit your goodly city as a looker-on rather than as a showman to be looked at. On Saturday night 3d at 1/2 past 8 at your City Hotel I have written your editors and requested quietly to meet me, on which occasion my tattooed Greek nobleman will show himself to them in a private [word indecipherable]. If you and any [indecipherable] would like to be there at that time I shall be pleased to see you and allow you to see a real wonder."
What impression the "Greek Tattooed Nobleman" may have left is lost to the mists of time.
"Just another one of those discoveries here at City Hall." Campbell remarked.
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