Could "old fashioned" mean "angry" or "disconsolate" in early 19th Century England?
Patrick O'Brian wrote the Aubrey/Maturin seafaring novels during the late 20th Century, but the novels read as if they were written during the early 1800s (at least as far as I can tell, which isn't all that far).
O'Brian sometimes uses the phrase "old fashioned" in a way that apparently means something like "irked", "angry", or "disconsolate", depending on the situation. Here are two examples from his novels:
From Post Captain (second in the series):
“...and John Lakey, maintop. Do you remember him? You sewed him up very near, the first time you ever sailed with us and we had a brush with an Algerine. He swears you saved his privates, sir, and is most uncommon grateful: would feel proper old fashioned without ‘em, he says.”
From Desolation Island (fifth in the series):
“I dare say," said Cobb. "But he’s only a blue finner, a nasty, spiteful thing. You plant a harpoon in his side, and what does he do? He rushes on you like a thunder-clap and beats the boat to splinters and then runs out a thousand fathom of line. You don’t want to take notice of him. Now by your leave, sir, I must go aloft. There’s Moses Harvey looking down quite old-fashioned, for to be relieved.”
The first quotation discusses a man who was wounded in the genitals during a battle and nearly lost them, but for the swift and capable action of the ship's surgeon. Presumably, when he says he would "feel proper old fashioned without 'em" he must mean something like disconsolate. The second quotation refers to Moses Harvey who is waiting to be relieved and is looking down disdainfully on Cobb, who should have already relieved him.
I'm curious if this is how "old fashioned" was really used in England, or at least among British sailors, in the early 1800s, or if O'Brian is perhaps taking some literary license and coining a phrase that sounds right for the ambiance he's trying to create.
The second example is not so much 'disdainful' as 'disapproving', and is still in use in Britain (e.g. here). However, the OED's earliest citation is 1911, and that doubtful, so O'Brien is apparently using twentieth-century language rather than nineteenth. But bear in mind that there is very little evidence for how seamen spoke in those days, so it may easily be accurate; just not demonstrably so.