Notwithstanding the peculiar advantages of his house—its independence of Keating or his predecessors, and the convenience of guests not being obliged to walk out of doors to reach their bed-rooms—Tennent’s speculation was a failure, and on February 3rd, 1757, he died, heavily in debt. His creditors, at a loss what to do with the house, let it to his widow at a rent of £50 a year. When she died, in 1768, it was sold to James Graham, of the “Black Bull,” who carried it on, with much success, until his death in 1777. But although he was so successful with the “Saracen’s Head,” he was unfortunate in other directions and died bankrupt. He was succeeded by his widow, who in 1791 married one Buchanan, who seems to have been rather a wild person, and indeed himself went bankrupt in 1791, dying two years later.
In 1792 the “Saracen’s Head” was purchased by William Miller; who, later, converted it into shops and tenements.
The sign of the house was an enormous half-length picture of a turbaned Saracen, with goggling eyes, represented as fiercely drawing his scimitar, and habited in a claret-coloured gown, decorated with a red sash.
This house was exceptionally famous as a literary landmark. In October 1773, Johnson and Boswell stayed two nights, on their return from the Hebrides; the poet Gray is thought to have met the brothers Foulis, the famous Glasgow printers, and to have concluded arrangements here for their edition of his poems, including the famous _Elegy_; Dorothy Wordsworth, in her “Journal,” under August 22nd, 1803, tells how pleased she and her brother were at last to leave the weary coach and find themselves in “the quiet little back parlour” of the “Saracen’s Head.”
The magistrates, in that age a convivial set of men, delighted to assemble in the “Magistrates’ Room,” and their capacity for drinking deep may be judged from the size of the famous punch-bowl of the establishment, which held five gallons. Adorned with the City arms, it was usually brought in, shoulder-high, by the landlord himself, and with great ceremony placed before the Chairman and the magistrates, who were probably themselves carried home at a later stage of the session, or left sleeping off the effects under the table. The bowl has for many years been lost sight of. Last seen in 1860, it is believed to be no longer in existence.