Oscillations on Hilbert envelope
A close alternative to a Hilbert transformer is using two infinite impulse response (IIR) all-pass filters that have a phase difference of approximately 90° over the frequency range of interest. For envelope detection, the two all-pass outputs are used in place of the original signal and its Hilbert transform. Here is one such filter pair with quadrature outputs $\text{out}_0$ and $\text{out}_1$:

$$\text{mid}_0[t] = 0.4794008656\,(\text{in}[t-1] + \text{mid}_0[t-2]) - \text{in}[t-3]\\
\text{mid}_1[t] = 0.8762184935\,(\text{mid}_0[t] + \text{mid}_1[t-2]) - \text{mid}_0[t-2]\\
\text{mid}_2[t] = 0.9765975895\,(\text{mid}_1[t] + \text{mid}_2[t-2]) - \text{mid}_1[t-2]\\
\text{out}_0[t] = 0.9974992559\,(\text{mid}_2[t] + \text{out}_0[t-2]) - \text{mid}_2[t-2]$$
$$\text{mid}_3[t] = 0.1617584983\,(\text{in}[t] + \text{mid}_3[t-2]) - \text{in}[t-2]\\
\text{mid}_4[t] = 0.7330289323\,(\text{mid}_3[t] + \text{mid}_4[t-2]) - \text{mid}_3[t-2]\\
\text{mid}_5[t] = 0.9453497003\,(\text{mid}_4[t] + \text{mid}_5[t-2]) - \text{mid}_4[t-2]\\
\text{out}_1[t] = 0.9905991567\,(\text{mid}_5[t] + \text{out}_1[t-2]) - \text{mid}_5[t-2]$$

The coefficients were optimized for minimum largest error over a 20 Hz to 22.03 kHz pass band at a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz. For a sinusoidal input the largest possible residual error in the envelope is -44 dB or ±0.6%. The following envelope is detected for a unit impulse at time 0:



The vertical axis is magnitude and the horizontal axis is time in samples. Because the all-pass filters are causal, the envelope will not be disturbed until after any transient. Reversing the exponentially decaying input signal gives quite a nice envelope all the way to the transient:



There is a bit of a time lag, which is why the input signal peaks are higher than the envelope. The time lag will be worse for a frequency close to the design band limits of the all-pass filter pair.

If your bandwidth and error requirements are different, you can optimize your own polyphase allpass filters using the HIIR library by Laurent de Soras.

About filtering the envelope: A basic property of linear time invariant (LTI) systems is that if you filter an exponential function then the filter's output is the same exponential function multiplied by a constant. That does not affect the calculated decay rate. The same applies to your truncated exponential envelope if you only use smoothing filter outputs that are not affected by the end effects, by discarding part of the output or by using an anti-causal smoothing filter. The perspective is that you would use smoothing to reduce noise in general, not to reduce end effects. But if you do use it to reduce end effects, I don't think there is an equivalence between envelope filtering and generating the envelope using an all-pass filter pair, because the first does not preserve signal power.