The Rev. V. H. Stanton[78] kindly acceded to Miss Beale’s request to give the addresses at the three Quiet Days which opened the conference in 1884. In the following year Canon Mason did this. It is noticeable that on almost every occasion the conductor of this Retreat for teachers was drawn from the ranks of Cambridge. The reason for this Miss Beale often explained, as in the following letter written as late as April 1904:—
‘I have had nearly all the book you sent read to me; there are some beautiful thoughts, but I don’t feel quite at home in the general atmosphere. It is difficult to describe, but I remember when Archbishop Benson was choosing a Conductor for our Retreat, he said one day, he would rather choose from the Cambridge school of thought. I asked him what was the difference between Cambridge and Oxford, and he said, “The latter began with the thought of sin, the former with the thought of the Divine Life in man.”
‘Some day when we meet I may be able to make clearer what I mean.’
Mr. Stanton’s earnest sympathetic addresses were greatly valued by those who were present in 1884. Not less prized was the generous kindness of the Lady Principal in the weeks which followed the Retreat. Miss Beale not only gave frequent addresses on various subjects, continuing in some the line of thought begun on the Quiet Days, she was also constantly at the service of any member of the party for discussion or counsel.
‘I expected certainly to see something of you,’ one who had been present wrote afterwards to her, ‘but that you would constitute yourself the mother of the party, be with us at meals, and do so very much for our improvement and entertainment was quite undreamt of. Indeed, we were all touched by it. I think those quiet days at the beginning gave a special tone of earnestness to the gathering.’
Mrs. Soulsby wrote of the ‘help and comfort you gave to me and so many others by arranging that Retreat. I have never been present at anything so calculated to do steady and lasting good.’
And many spoke of the ‘sense of fellowship’ which had been gained by meeting so many with like aims and interests; they told how they were going back to work with ‘new hope for the future,’ or with ‘many new lights and helpful suggestions to aid’ them. Some said the work of teaching had been represented to them in a new light, some that the conference helped them to a new start. One told how she was ‘in danger of making shipwreck when your wise counsel saved me.’ Another said: ‘One thing struck me very much, the fellow-feeling and anxiety to help that teachers who have been at Cheltenham have for each other.’
More than a hundred teachers, many of them belonging to Cheltenham, were present for the first days of the conference in 1884. Some twenty outside teachers remained for the whole month. The time was long enough to foster real intimacy. A great deal of time and thought had been devoted to arrangements beforehand, in order that all might get the utmost benefit from the time. In this Miss Beale received much willing co-operation from her own staff, and Miss Caines lent Fauconberg House and her servants. Miss Beale was specially anxious that during the Quiet Days all should have the opportunity of keeping well the silence which was observed. Those who had no rooms of their own had little sitting-rooms assigned them in the College, the music-rooms being available for this purpose. That part of the Cheltenham world which still regarded Miss Beale with suspicion and to whom a Retreat appeared, even as late as 1884, to be a dangerous High Church innovation, raised a cry of alarm. The music-rooms had been turned into cells! It is not known what the word implied to those who made the outcry, and it was soon silenced, but it caused a little annoyance at the time.