Definition of "wifeless"

I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I have no part. I am wifeless—childless—who is it speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life?

1899, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter I, in The Sleeper Awakes‎

I at once telephoned. The Shades were out, said the cheeky ancillula, an obnoxious little fan who came to cook for them on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to cuddle her some wifeless day.

1962, Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire