The candlesticks belonged to Mikhail Bulgakov’s second wife Lyubov Belozerskaya. She lived with the writer for seven years — from 1925 to 1932. The future spouses met in the winter of 1924, when Lyubov Yevgenyevna returned to Moscow from emigration. Belozerskaya liked skiing, practiced horseback riding and drove a car. Lyubov Yevgenyevna had a horse named Nina, which she co-owned with the wife of the actor Mikhail Chekhov.

Belozerskaya recalled that Nina was“a stubborn, dim-witted creature, often reared up, doing a ‘candle’, as the equestrians put it”. After the Chekhovs left the country, Lyubov Yevgenievna had to give up Nina — she could not afford to provide for her alone. In Bulgakov’s time, women rarely had automobile licenses, and Lyubov Yevgenyevna recalled that she was the only woman on the driving course.

Mikhail Afanasyevich told his friends a joke,

“Of course, he exaggerated a bit, but the fact that the drivers passing by, greeted me, is true…,” recalled Lyubov Yevgenyevna. Belozerskaya dreamed of a private car, but Bulgakov could not afford such a purchase, even in the most profitable times.

Around the same time, when Lyubov Yevgenyevna attended automobile courses, she began to learn English together with Bulgakov and, in her words, made progress. The musical scholar and singer Marina Spendiarova taught her and Mikhail Afanasyevich English. In the 1930s, working with Natalia Venkstern on the staging of “The Pickwick Club” (based on the novel by Charles Dickens), Bulgakov wrote out excerpts from the novel in English. He was also engaged as an actor in this production.