 He was the younger brother of the cricketer Algernon Haskett-Smith.At Oxford he studied law and continued along a promising athletic path, reaching a long jump (unofficial) world record of 25 feet once in practice.On a university reading party at Aber, Wales in 1880, Haskett Smith became interested in exploring local cliffs, and in 1881 he journeyed to the Lake District and took a room at the inn at Wasdale Head, staying there for two months, meeting Frederick Herman Bowring, an enthusiastic fell-scrambler some forty years older, and, in essence, becoming Bowring's protégé.