[1] He left the circus for a time, and found employment as a piqueur-chef in the stables of Richard Wallace in Paris.

[1] In 1889 there was a suggestion that he might become écuyer en chef to the Cadre Noir of the École Nationale d'Équitation at Saumur, in Maine-et-Loire in western France; this did not happen, as he was not a soldier.

[3] In the autumn of 1897 Fillis travelled to Saint Petersburg to perform at the Circus Ciniselli; he took four horses, three Thoroughbreds and Maestoso, a Lipizzaner he had bought in Vienna in 1894.

[3] His work with them was much admired, and early in 1898 he received an invitation to court, where the Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, who was at the time inspector-general of the cavalry, asked him to organise a course of instruction for the officers of the Imperial house.

In 1911, the family moved to the United States, where they initially settled in Manhattan, New York and later in Greenwich, Connecticut.